Blood Makes the Knife Holy
by Vague Notion
Summary: The children of the Big Three, both Greek and Roman, all wake up deep underground after sharing a foreboding dream. To make things even less convenient, Percy gets separated from the group. And loses his powers. And doesn't have shoes. So what's going on? And what does this all have to do with Annabeth? Info inside.
1. Chapter 1

**Blood Makes the Knife Holy**

_The children of the Big Three, both Greek and Roman, all wake up deep underground after sharing a foreboding dream. To make things even less convenient, Percy gets separated from the group. And loses his powers. And doesn't have shoes. So what's going on? And what does this all have to do with Annabeth?_

_Rated T for language. Pre-existing Percabeth and Jason/Piper, but this story isn't much for ships. Set some time after the Giant War, with some obvious liberties taken. Also caves. Why do these kids always end up underground? Can't be good for the complexion. Lookin' at you, Nico. _

_All reviews, favs, and alerts appreciated!_

X

Percy was having a great day until he got shot by a magic arrow. It wasn't even his fault-he was just standing there, stuck in a cave, with Thalia and Jason and Hazel and Nico. Lost and cold and trying to keep everyone from devolving into a shouting match, which he wasn't good at in the slightest, since he was usually the one edging around a fight. And it didn't help that they were in near-total darkness. Or hungry. Or without water.

… So maybe he wasn't having the best day, but he always tried to be a glass-half-full kinda guy, and the arrow really trashed his efforts. Things had started well enough. It was a warm June morning when Percy rolled out of bed and found his way toward the smell of breakfast. Everyone else seemed to be up already, and he wondered when it was exactly that Chiron started letting him sleep in. Maybe saving the world twice merited a belated wake-up call.

After some Belgian waffles and a demonstration on how to keep your elbows in during a sword fight, Percy found himself on the sand by the Sound. A few Aphrodite kids were lounging on beach towels, soaking up as much sun as they could fit into their allotted down time. Percy waved when they greeted him, but continued walking along the stretch of sand until he was far enough away to not invite conversation. Then he plunked down on the side of a dune and readjusted his aviator sunglasses.

So far, a good day. No caves, no spats with Thalia, no magic arrows. But it was possibly the last moment of reprieve that he would find, because after sitting for only three minutes, watching the waves lap against the shore, who should shuffle up behind him but Nico di Angelo.

Percy knew he was there before Nico did anything noticeable to announce his presence. He sat in silence for a few beats, waiting for Nico to say something, but when he continued to squat a few feet up the dune, hesitating, Percy leaned back onto his elbows.

"Wow, you've been out here for a whole two minutes. You sure you can handle all this sun," he asked, not looking away from the water. Behind him, Nico huffed and shuffled forward.

"Don't be an asshole," came his quiet reply. He nestled down next to Percy and looked toward the Aphrodite kids, who were giggling amongst themselves.

The two cousins shared another moment of silence. Percy was never sure how much patience he had for Nico-sometimes it felt endless, but often he felt wary of him. Nico had lied to Percy one too many times. Their relationship now was a series of deep breaths and awkward silences.

"I... had a dream, last night," Nico finally said, breaking the silence. A bit of dread rolled up Percy's spine-how often was it that dreams lead to something positive? At least not for a demigod like Nico. Percy was still for a moment before nodding, prompting him to continue.

"It didn't make a lot of sense, but it involved the children of the Big Three, and Hazel said she had a similar dream. I was wondering if you did, too."

Finally, Percy looked toward him. Nico couldn't see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but the reflection of the ocean was a good substitute.

"Nothing demigod-related," he said, in a deliberate way that gave each word a strange amount of weight, "but I did dream that I won the lottery and bought a house made of kitchen sponges."

Nico frowned at the reflection in Percy's sunglasses. Whether or not he was being serious or mocking him, Nico couldn't tell, and some part of Percy liked it that way.

"Nothing about being underground, or... or ogres?"

Percy's right eyebrow arched up from behind his sunglasses. "Ogres, Nico?"

"What, you're going to get picky about monster species now?"

Percy pushed himself into a sitting position and rolled his shoulders until one of them popped audibly. He took a deep breath, (something he seemed to do a lot when Nico was around,) and pulled off his sunglasses. Underneath, his sea-green eyes looked tired and glassy. Nico blinked.

"To be honest," Percy began before Nico could question how tired he looked, "I had a weird dream two nights ago. But I don't usually dream about the future-just the present and the past. I always thought Rachel was the one who had to deal with all that Fate crap. Or Piper, I guess, with her knife."

Nico adjusted the way he was sitting, shifting into a less-temporary position. He waited for Percy to continue, but the older boy was staring out at the ocean with a serious look on his face, suddenly lost in thought.

"What did you see," he prompted when the silence stretched too long. The serious look melted off of Percy's face, and he looked tired again.

"I thought it was the labyrinth at first, but it was too... cave-like. The tunnel didn't change at all the farther down it I went. And the whole time, I had this sense that I was trying to find you guys. But... I was being hunted, too."

Nico didn't say anything for a long time. The Aphrodite kids had started to wrestle around in the sand together, laughing loudly. It was impressive to watch, the way they roughhoused while simultaneously keeping their hair from getting messed up.

It was Percy who broke the silence next. He turned toward Nico more fully and looked him right in the eye, which Nico hated. Percy's eyes had about three settings: sarcastic, I'm-about-to-kill-you, and what Piper had once referred to as "big baby seal eyes". Nico was now getting the full-on baby seal treatment, whether it was intentional on Percy's part or not.

"Nico, I didn't have any powers. In the dream, I think I was... I think I was mortal."

The connections must have shown on Nico's face, because the baby seal eyes vanished and Percy looked serious again. "What," he asked, in a deadpan with undertones that read both 'you better not being pulling any stunts' and 'I might hit you if you are pulling stunts'. Nico chewed the inside of his lower lip for a second before sighing. Honesty was usually the best policy around Percy.

"In the dream I had, we were searching for you. I think because we knew you couldn't fend for yourself."

Percy's face flashed with about ten different reactions at once, but before he could pick one, the sand shifted above them, and a new figure appeared on the slope. Annabeth slid down toward them and bumped right into Percy, using his back as a stopping point. From the way neither of them reacted to it, Nico got the impression that Annabeth did that a lot.

"I've been looking for you two for a decade," Annabeth frowned, skipping the pleasantries of 'hello' and 'how are you'. "I just got an Iris message from Grover."

Percy visibly sat straighter. "Grover? What did he have to say?"

The look on Annabeth's face kept Percy from reaching Excited Puppy status, but it was obvious he was happy to hear that Grover had been in contact. He shifted to make room for Annabeth between them, but she stayed shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Something territorial was glinting in her eye.

"He didn't have good news," she said, glancing toward Nico to make sure he was paying attention. "He said he ran into the Hunters of Artemis. Apparently, they haven't seen Thalia in almost two days."

Nico and Percy stared at her, and it must not have been the reaction she expected. "What, are they too loud," she asked, tipping her chin toward the Aphrodite kids, "or did you just not hear me?"

Percy shifted suddenly, and from the way Annabeth was leaning on him, her weight toppled against his chest. She tried to sit up and push away from him, but he pulled her right into him and dropped his chin onto her shoulder. Annabeth twisted and demanded he release her, but when she finally looked back and saw the look on his face, she stilled.

"... What," she asked, this time with more concern in her tone. She looked from Percy to Nico as she adjusted herself and sat sideways in the sand between Percy's knees. Her eyes settled on Nico. "Why is he giving me the baby seal eyes?"

Percy frowned. "I don't have baby seal-"

"He and Hazel and I have all had foreboding dreams about the same thing. As if something is about to happen."

Annabeth stared at him for a beat, a fire in her eyes and the information raced through her mind. "What do you mean? What something?"

"We're not sure," Percy answered, his arms still looped around Annabeth's waist as if letting go might separate them forever. Ever since the Ancient Lands, everyone had gotten used to how clingy the two of them had become.

"Something to do with a cave," Nico said, ignoring Percy's warning look and regretting it at the sight of Annabeth's immediate state of panic.

"We're not-it's not _there_," Percy insisted, trying to alleviate the tension that had suddenly struck his girlfriend. "Listen, in the dream it felt more like the Labyrinth, it wasn't-"

"The Labyrinth was destroyed," Annabeth said quickly, staring at nothing in particular as her mind raced. Percy gave Nico a look as if to say 'I owe you a punch in the mouth' before readjusting his arms around Annabeth more securely.

"I know, I know. I don't think it was the Labyrinth. It just felt like a normal, good old-fashioned cave."

"Not Tar-... Not _there_," Annabeth said, her tone one of insistence, but her face desperately searching for confirmation. Percy set his jaw.

"Not there," he said, and they fell into silence. All three of them had an unwanted, intimate knowledge of that which they were referring to. And while Percy and Annabeth had learned to hide their panic when Tartarus came up in conversation, they had no reason to play brave when Nico was their only company. He knew as well as they did that it was not a memory to revisit.

"So," Annabeth said after a long silence, clearing her throat. "This dream had something to do with Thalia?"

Despite the concern that hung around them, the boys were thankful for a change of subject. Percy loosened his hug around Annabeth and picked up his sunglasses, offering them to Nico, who took them after a moment of uncertainty.

"Listen, let's not bullshit here," Percy said, his voice sounding confident once more. "We all know that there's no such thing as 'just a dream', not for us. Especially if Nico, Hazel, and I all shared a matching set. Thalia was in them, and now she's missing, so I'm going to go ahead and assume they're connected. I mean, it's not like we've ever been lucky with this sort of thing."

"Understatement of the century," Annabeth said dryly, sitting up and letting Percy's arms fall away from her midsection. "Then she's in some sort of cave? We can find her?"

Nico frowned and shook his head. "I don't know about Percy's dream, but you weren't in mine," he said, watching Annabeth's face carefully. They both turned toward Percy expectantly.

"Mm, not mine either," he admitted, looking at her apologetically. She frowned, and then turned back to Nico.

"You're suggesting that because I wasn't in the dreams, I'm somehow not going on this quest?"

"We don't even know it's a quest, yet," Nico replied. "But... If you did go, wouldn't you be in the dreams too?"

"Well, from the sound of it, I got... _get_ separated from the group," Percy reasoned. "Maybe Annabeth is separated too."

Annabeth took a deep breath and fanned out both her hands to bring the attention back to her. "Okay, hold up. How about we start from the beginning. _What_ exactly happened in the dream?"

X

He had always been good at running. Even over the rocky floor of the tunnel, he managed to find footing with each step, flying through the darkness like he had a thermos full of winds pointed behind him. He could hear echoes coming from far back, gruff voices and the clattering of metal against the cave walls, as if those pursuing him were not as swift as he was.

His shoulder ached. He could hardly see where he was going, running along, but in the deepest part of his gut, he hoped with all his strength that he would run smack into Jason. Maybe he'd get lucky, round a corner, and come face-to-face with Thalia's shield, or tackle Nico to the ground. He so desperately wanted to find them, to have safety in numbers. And while he had no context to remember why, he knew in that same deep part of his gut that he would not be able to defend himself when those gruff voices and clattering weapons caught up with him. He was cold, and barefoot, and defenseless. The feeling was alien and unsolicited, and he wished he could outrun it too.

From far behind him, a new sound echoed passed. It was a woman's voice, dangerous and angry, but ultimately amused. "_Percy_," the voice called, in a teasing way that made his skin crawl, "_little Percy Jackson, running for his life. You can't hide forever, dear. And when I get my hands on you_," the voice dragged a bit, distorted by the distance it had to travel along the cave walls, "_that little girlfriend of yours will know pain._"

X

He tried to whitewash the story without losing details, but the look Annabeth was giving him suggested he hadn't done a very good job. Percy looked toward Nico, sitting with his sunglasses on, and wished he could see the expression in his eyes.

"... It can't be Gaea," Annabeth said slowly, not sounding entirely certain. Percy shook his head.

"No, it wasn't. It didn't sound anything like her, and the voice wasn't coming from the earth."

Annabeth and Nico both relaxed their shoulders a bit. Then the attention shifted to Nico, and the tension returned to his upper back. He cleared his throat.

"My dream was less eventful than his," he said, gesturing lamely at Percy. "I was with Thalia and Jason and Hazel. We were in a tunnel, trying to stay quiet, looking for Percy. Thalia and Jason were arguing about what direction to follow. And I could feel in my gut that Percy was... weak. Without powers."

Percy nodded gravely. The three of them sat in silence for a beat before Annabeth suddenly stood, startling Percy and Nico out of their brooding.

"Come on," she said, her voice full of authority. "We're giving Chiron a visit."

X

They were walking passed the strawberry fields on the way to the big house when the the hairs on their arms and the backs of their necks suddenly stood up. The other campers nearby apparently felt it too, because the kids in the field stopped working, and the ones playing volleyball in the sandpit suddenly stopped their game.

The rush of blood to her head hit Annabeth hard, and her vision turned to static while she doubled over. For a moment, she couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything. Just a shrill ringing in her ears, and a haze of white all around her.

As her vision cleared and her equilibrium began to return, Annabeth stumbled back to her feet. The campers out in the field, closest to her, looked dizzy and confused, but those farther away toward the volleyball court were scrambling toward her.

"Percy," she said, before she was really thinking. His name fell out of her mouth on instinct as she wheeled around, her eyes searching to make sure he was okay. But behind her, where Percy and Nico had been walking, there was nothing. Just an empty path along the side of the strawberry fields.

"Percy?" She called again, her heart clenching with panic. Her head was nearly clear now, as a few campers from the Apollo cabin skid to a stop beside her. Two of them were still shirtless from their volleyball game.

"Percy!" She shouted, as realization set in. A few other campers echoed her call, throwing Nico's name out as well, but there was no reply. The two children of the Big Three were nowhere to be seen.

"What happened," Travis Stoll asked breathlessly, having just bound over several rows of strawberry plants, "what was that? It got all bright and hazy and they just, like, evaporated!"

Annabeth looked at him wildly, trying to make sense of what he was saying. She was breathing fast; her head started growing light again, and before she could even register it, Travis and one of the shirtless Apollo campers were holding her up only a foot above the ground. Someone said her name, but their voice was watery and distant. The world started to get staticy again, and Annabeth blacked out, Percy's name still on her lips.

X

_At posting, this story is written through about chapter 6. Think it's worth posting the rest?_


	2. Chapter 2

_Talk about an awesome reception! I'm really happy you guys are interested, because this story is very fun to write. Sorry about the cliffhanger last chapter, but this next scene didn't feel the same if I broke it up, and it's about twice as long as the last one. The chapters won't all be the same length, but I think its best that way._

_Anyway, let's find out what the hell happened to Percy and Nico._

X

Nico wasn't immediately alarmed. In part due to the fact that he was quite at home undergound, but also because it took him a few moments just to realize that they were no longer at Camp Half-Blood. They had been walking along the side of the strawberry fields in the summer heat, and in the next instant, the temperature dropped around them and the light vanished. When the rush of blood to his head calmed, he found himself standing in a dark, silent tunnel.

Percy must have been just as surprised as him, because a few beats of silence passed before he scrambled to his feet, startling Nico.

"Shit," Percy exhaled behind him, looking wildly up and down the tunnel. Nico was still trying to process the change in location, but the son of Poseidon didn't wait. He grabbed Nico around the elbow and pulled him toward the side of the tunnel where a small cluster of rocks provided them with some shelter.

They squat next to each other for a few seconds, both on high alert, before they locked eyes.

"What the hell just happened," Percy asked, though it sounded more like a demand. Nico shook his head and shrugged lamely. Unsatisfied with the response, Percy pressed his lips together and turned his attention down the tunnel.

It was about as wide as a school hallway, perhaps a little larger. There were thin cracks in the ceiling, slivers of space that sliced up to fresh air about twenty feet above. Strips of white sky criss-crossed the tunnel ceiling when they looked up. It provided just enough light that they could see, but the air was still damp and stale.

Before either boy could speak again, a clatter of metal echoed passed them from far down the tunnel. They shot one another a look before ducking down and pressing their backs against the cluster of rocks, shoulder-to-shoulder. Percy had Riptide in his hand in a heartbeat, but Nico was unarmed. It hadn't been necessary to carry his sword through camp, and it wasn't like he had planned on magically appearing in a dangerous cave.

The clatter came again, slightly closer, and this time it was accompanied by quick footsteps. Something—or someone—yelled out, in a deep voice that shot a chill down both of their spines. Percy held his arm out in front of Nico, keeping him against the rock, while he carefully peered around the side down the tunnel. He was still for a moment, both boys holding their breath, before he sat back.

_Stay put_, Percy mouthed, and for a moment Nico thought he was going to abandon him, but Percy only lowered the arm that had been in front of him and waited silently to uncap Riptide, his head turned toward the direction of the noise.

The footsteps grew more audible after a second yell echoed by. The sound of a weapon striking stone brought about another deep yell of frustration. By Nico's count, there were three sets of feet. He could feel their steps vibrating through the rock faintly, the way only a child of Hades could. He lifted up three fingers and Percy nodded, having come to the same conclusion even without Nico's powers. As the footsteps grew closer, they could hear breathing and grunts as weapons were swung, clanging together in a moving battle.

Tension built between their shoulders as the sounds advanced on them. They pressed closer to the wall of the cave. Or rather, Percy pressed inward, sandwiching Nico against the stone beside him. Despite the approaching danger, it felt oddly secure to have Percy on one side and rock on the other. Nico was framed by a familiar element _and_ the most powerful demigod he had ever known.

Still, he flinched when two figures raced passed, blind to the two of them huddled in the darkness. They were average size, no bigger than Percy or Nico. They were the ones responsible for the heavy breathing, occasional grunts, and fast footwork. One of them held a glowing golden sword; the one who ran passed second had a large silver shield on her back, with the hideous face of Medusa molded onto its surface.

_Thalia,_ Nico thought with widening eyes. He would have moved to get her attention, but in that same moment, the heaviest footfalls of the three barreled passed. A thick figure, easily eight feet tall, loped awkwardly down the tunnel passed them, pursuing the other two. In the pale light, his skin looked rusty red. He wore a tattered animal skin around his waist and was swinging a crudely-cast axe blindly in front of him.

The monster released a frustrated yell, and Percy pushed off of the rock so suddenly that Nico flinched again. He scrambled to his feet, but Percy was too quick to merit running after. Before the monster was even ten feet passed their hiding place, Riptide extended into the intimidating golden sword that had slain so many monsters before, and slashed through the murky darkness against the monster's back.

The thing howled, and stumbled, and hit the ground just in time to dissipate into a cloud of dust, leaving Percy standing in a thin column of light, looking every bit as dangerous as he always did when he fought monsters.

Farther down the tunnel, the two had stopped running. The shield turned away from their direction as Thalia turned around, surprised. But it wasn't the Hunter who spoke—it was Jason, who stepped up beside her and lowered his sword, a look of surprise on his face.

"Percy?"

Nico took his cue and advanced so that he was visible too. Thalia muttered his name before the two of them jogged back down the tunnel toward them. When they were all standing in a loose circle, Nico was struck by a strong sense of deja vu.

"What's going on," Percy asked, cutting right to business. "Where are we?"

"No idea," Jason sighed, looking toward Thalia with an expression that read '_go on_'. She nodded and set her jaw, and Aegis closed shut around her wrist.

"I've been here two days and I still can't figure it out. These tunnels don't make any sense, they're full of ogres, and I only stumbled across Jason last night. What in Hades are _you two_ doing here?"

Percy and Nico exchanged a look. "We just got here. Literally: we were at camp about five minutes ago, and suddenly we were in this dank pit," Percy said, gesturing around. Thalia and Jason both nodded, looking more concerned than surprised, which worried Nico.

"Thalia," he said, speaking for the first time, "you've been here two days?"

She nodded, and he looked at Percy. "You said you had your dream two days ago, right?"

Percy studied him for a moment before nodding. "And you and Hazel had it last night," he said, glancing toward Jason, "which is when you ended up here."

"You've had dreams too?" Jason frowned at Nico and then at Percy. "I don't suppose your's had us desperately searching for you."

Percy and Nico sighed at the same time, their shoulders slumping. "So I _do_ get separated," Percy groaned.

"And you're somehow without powers," Thalia added, earning an annoyed look from the son of Poseidon.

"But then where is Hazel?" Nico looked between the three other Demigods for some sort of answer, but they had nothing to offer. They fell quiet, all four of them trapped deep in thought, when a squeak ripped through the silence. They turned with their weapons at the ready, Aegis opening and Riptide leveled, but there were no ogres barreling toward them.

Rather, about twenty feet down the tunnel, Hazel sat up stiffly. She squinted through the dark toward their glowing weapons, rubbing her forehead.

"... _Percy?_"

"Hazel," Nico piped, darting forward through the dark toward his sister. She watched him advance, still not registering where she was, and let him help her to her feet. The other four circled around her and Nico, completing the group.

"Where am I," Hazel demanded when it finally clicked that she had been magically transported to a dark wet cave. "What's going on?"

"We don't know," Thalia answered, though she sounded tired of saying it. Hazel frowned at nothing in particular before she looked at Jason with surprise and relief.

"We've been looking all over for you," she said. "Reyna was stressing something awful. She said you went into the armory and just vanished."

"You think it could be Hera again?" Jason glanced at Thalia, but he was mostly talking to Percy, who shook his head skeptically.

"After her last stunt, I seriously doubt that," Thalia agreed.

Nico held Hazel's hand as they backed away, giving one another some space but remaining in a circle. Hazel pressed her free palm against her forehead and blinked several times, but like Nico, she appeared at ease underground.

"Okay," Percy sighed, "so the gang's all here. What now?"

"We keep moving that way," Thalia said immediately, nearly cutting him off. She pointed in the direction that she and Jason had been running. "Follow the cracks. The distance between us and the sky is getting smaller the longer we go in that direction."

"Or we could try something new," Jason said, layering his voice with authority. Thalia met his eye with a sharp look, and Percy took a small step back from the two of them, blinking.

"I'm telling you, it's that way," Thalia said, jerking her thumb in the direction she had just been pointing in.

"We've been following these cracks for a day and they aren't getting us any closer to the sky. We need to find a different way out of here, we just keep running into ogres." Jason turned to face her, and Percy took another subtle step back, once again shoulder-to-shoulder with Nico. The three of them watched as the two Grace siblings attempted to stare one another down.

"Switching up strategies now is a bad idea. We can handle the ogres now that we have strength in numbers," Thalia said, gesturing directly at Percy.

"Or we could avoid risking injury if we go in a different direction. That fork a mile back looked promising-"

"Oh, not the fork again. Listen, I know what I'm talking about, I'm a Hunter of Artemis. I have excellent navigational skills."

"Yeah, they're so excellent they've managed to get us even more lost."

"Well I don't see you-"

"_Guys,_" Percy ground out, so suddenly that they both stopped and turned their attention toward him. He stepped forward and narrowed his eyes at them disapprovingly. "Cut it out. If we want to get out of here, we all need to work together. None of that 'follow the leader' crap."

Thalia looked like she wanted to argue with him, but Jason's shoulders slumped in acknowledgement. He took a deep breath. "Percy's right."

Thalia opened her mouth, but Percy cut her off. "None of us know what's going on any more than anyone else, so we have to work together."

That seemed to register with her, and she closed her mouth and glared down the tunnel in the direction she wanted to go. Nico got the impression that Percy and Thalia had a long history of who's-in-charge spats, so he was grateful that the bickering seemed to be fading.

"So what, then," Jason asked, but Hazel gave Nico's hand a small tug, and he turned his attention toward her.

"My feet," she muttered, pointing down. She was barefoot, standing on the cold cave floor. "I mean, not that I mind the earth beneath my feet, but I don't even have shoes. I was inside."

Nico looked down at his own feet. The sneakers he was wearing were nearly worn to uselessness from all the wandering he did in both the mortal world and their father's realm. He thought of offering her his shoes, but he would be having just as uncomfortable a time wandering these caves as she was.

Without a word, Percy kicked off his shoes and nudged them toward Hazel with his bare toes. Compared to Nico's, they were new and looked rather comfortable. Maybe too big, but Hazel's eyes glinted with longing.

"Oh, I can't, I was just saying-"

"It's fine," Percy shrugged, giving her his patented "Everything Will Work Out" grin. Nico wondered how genuine it was, but Hazel returned a grateful smile and stepped into his shoes, sighing at the warmth that suddenly embraced her cold feet. She knelt, giving the fat laces a tug to try and compensate for the difference in shoe size.

Nico looked up at Percy, but he had already turned back to talk to Jason and Thalia. The Grace siblings still looked tense, as if they had tolerated a little bit too much of each other's company. Still, with the three of them standing together, it was a miracle that there weren't hordes of ogres descending on them already. Five children of the Big Three would have been enough, but Percy and Jason had a particular aura of power around them, something that made Nico feel tense even when they were just hanging out. Especially after seeing the two of them fight in the Ancient Lands.

Hazel stood upright again and cleared her throat, looking a little embarrassed about the shoe situation. She started to look around the cave more closely, examining the cracks in the ceiling in particular. She frowned, squinting at one of the bright strips of sky, and Nico wondered what she was thinking.

"Okay, inventory," Jason suggested, glancing at Percy's shoes on Hazel's feet. "What do we have between us?"

Within two minutes, they found themselves sitting in a tight circle toward the side of the tunnel. Between them, a small pile of things had been emptied from their pockets. Weapons aside, Percy offered up a twenty dollar bill, four drachma, his pair of sunglasses that Nico had stowed in his pocket, a pack of Big Red gum, and a shiny friendship bracelet that one of the kids from his sword lessons had made for him. Jason had seven denarii and a Clif bar, Nico (sans sunglasses,) had his skull ring and some enchanted unbreakable thread, and Hazel had only two denarii and three drachma.

It was Thalia who was prepared. As a Hunter, she had her equipment on her at all times, so she was the one to provide the quest basics: first aid, water, rope, duct tape, the works. They stared down at their meager belongings and avoided being the first to ask what would happen next.

"Well we have to keep moving," Thalia eventually said. "I wouldn't ordinarily say that sunglasses are useful underground, but they're Percy's, and you've managed to surprise me with less. You never know what'll be helpful."

Jason stood and hefted his sword a few times, testing it's familiar weight. "Nico, Hazel," he said, turning toward them, "I don't suppose you guys have any idea which way to go."

Nico closed his eyes a moment and tried to focus on the earth around them, but he couldn't. He could sense a few dozen yards out in any given direction, but then it just faded, as if something were cutting him off. Mildly alarmed, he opened his eyes and looked toward Hazel, who seemed to be sensing the same problem.

"I could make a tunnel," she said, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice. She stood and turned toward the cave wall, pressing her palms against it. They waited a second, then another, but nothing happened. Hazel dropped her hands and looked at the rock face, stunned.

"Someone's stopping us from using our powers," Nico ventured, standing up. He stared at Hazel, hoping she would deny his theory, but her look was just as panicked as his.

"You can't make tunnels?" Percy's eyes were somewhere between serious and Baby Seal mode.

"No," Hazel shook her head, "I can't even feel the rock after a few dozen yards."

Turning, she held her open palm out toward the floor and concentrated a moment, before a vein of gold glittered to the surface. She seemed to relax at the sight of it.

"A power dampener," Percy asked, glancing toward Thalia and Jason.

"... Magic," Thalia nodded with a frown, an edge of danger in her voice. "Whoever brought us here wants us to stay."

"Right you are," came a new voice, so suddenly that Hazel squeaked again in surprise. They peered through the darkness, turning their attention up and down the tunnel, but there was no one.

"What was that," Hazel whispered, pulling her arms close. The group stepped together closely, forming a circle with their backs to each other so that they were each facing a different direction. Facing one end of the tunnel was Jason and Thalia—facing the other way was Percy and Nico. Hazel stood rooted at the side, looking both ways.

The voice laughed. It was velvety, and feminine, and cruel. It seemed to come from up and down the tunnel, even above them. With their weapons at the ready, they stood in tight formation.

"Show yourself," Jason called. The echoes of his voice seemed to chase the laughter away, and there was a moment of tense silence. When it lasted too long, Thalia rolled her shoulders impatiently and lifted Aegis a bit higher.

"Come out, you coward," she called, glaring up and down the tunnel. To their right down the tunnel ahead of Jason and Thalia, the voice spoke again, this time more grounded.

"Have we resorted to name calling, Thalia Grace? I thought the Hunters of Artemis were more refined than that."

Standing fifteen feet away down the tunnel, feigning boredom, stood a woman so strikingly beautiful that Jason's sword dipped a fraction of an inch. The group turned their attention toward her as she walked slowly along the cave floor, slices of light passing over her too briefly to make out her features clearly.

"Let's see," the woman said conversationally, "we have the two children of Hades to my left," she mused, gesturing to where Hazel and Nico stood side-by-side, "both unarmed. We have the infamous Jason Grace, who's about three work-out sessions from looking like a 'roided up Ken doll." She smiled at him, but it looked more like a sneer. "_Men_," she tacked on, as if the word were poisonous. "And we have Thalia Grace, who has already been established as a hot-headed mess in desperate need for a makeover."

"I'll give _you_ a makeover," Thalia snarled, but she was too experienced a fighter to lunge at mere trash talk. The woman ignored the threat and continued to grin, this time more genuinely, as if she had finally spotted what she was looking for.

"And there in the back, who should I find but _little Percy Jackson_, all grown up and handsome."

Her words curled with sinister pleasure. The others glanced quickly in Percy's direction, but he was focused entirely on the woman, his eyes flashing with danger.

"Circe."

"Bin-go," the woman chimed, sounding infinitely too pleased with herself. "How flattering, that a hero of your status would remember me. And after all you've been through."

"What do you want," Percy demanded, his voice hard and threatening. The woman stepped forward one more pace, and the light coming from directly above made her beauty look demonic.

"I want _you_, sweetheart. What better bait to trap the little shrew who ruined all my fun?"

Percy's eyes flashed dangerously, and his grip tightened on Riptide. "Annabeth."

"Right again, my goodness. I didn't peg you as intelligent last time, but maybe those damned multivitamins really _did_ make a difference."

"What is she talking about," Thalia asked through clenched teeth, her nostrils flaring in Circe's direction. Percy set his jaw and rolled his shoulders, bracing for Circe to attack.

"Why, I'm sure you've all heard the story," Circe said, smiling as if she could barely contain herself, "lost in the Sea of Monsters, the only demigod son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena wash up on my island, and set free a bunch of bloodthirsty pirates."

"Reyna was on that island," Jason muttered, connecting her story with the one that he had heard at Camp Half-blood. "They trashed everything."

The smile on Circe's face turned to a sneer. "_Everything_. All because that damned daughter of Athena had to choose a_ boy_ over all the wondrous things I could offer her."

"You turned me into a guinea pig," Percy growled, raising Riptide toward the sorcerous.

"And you were adorable," Circe agreed. "Which is why I'm not blaming you, dear, not directly. All you did was waste space while you were on my island."

"Why trap us here," Thalia cut in. "If your beef is with Annabeth, why bring _us_ here?"

The terrible look on Circe's face lifted, and she raised her chin up, pulling a face of arrogant disdain. "Well that's the tricky thing about magic, isn't it? You find a spell that can summon a child of the Big Three, and the catch is that it only summons _all_ of them. Believe me, sweetheart, if I could have brought only Percy here, he'd be alone."

"But you've dampened our powers," Hazel said, gesturing between her and Nico. "That would take a different spell entirely."

Circe gave her a patient smile, and she looked beautiful again. "I did my research, dear. Had plenty of time to plan this all out and work around the problem of four additional demigods."

She leaned back then, lifting her arms and gesturing around at the tunnel as if it were a gorgeous art exhibit. "This," she said proudly, "is the very best mousetrap I could find. All I did was add a few cracks for dramatic lighting. I'm sure it'll keep you all nice and busy. Now, if you don't mind, I think we've had enough stalling for one day. Percy, if you'll be a dear."

She held out her hand, offering it to him even from the distance she was at. The amused look on her face made anger heat up inside Percy's gut, and his glare deepend. "You look ugly in this light," he said, his voice hard. It was momentarily satisfying, to watch the faux smile curl off of Circe's face, but it came back after only a second.

"I thought as much. Boys," she called, looking beyond the group of demigods. Metal and heavy footfalls echoed through the tunnel toward them.

Turning was Percy's mistake. Which isn't to say that _not_ turning would have prevented anything, but he should have known better than to turn without Riptide in front of him. He pivoted his attention behind him, down the length of the tunnel. There was a twang, a sharp whistling sound, and then a piercing, agonizing pain flared through his right shoulder.

An arrow that looked like glass split into his skin just beneath his collarbone and kept traveling at a high speed. If it had been a normal arrow, it would have easily had enough force to cut straight through him and into Thalia, who stood behind him. But the arrow seemed to light up when it made contact with his shoulder, a glowing flash that seeped under his skin and spread like a ripple as the arrow vanished into his shoulder entirely. First the arrowhead, then the shaft, and then finally the razor-sharp feathers disappeared into Percy's shoulder, and he buckled backwards, eyes wide.

It happened so suddenly that Thalia only managed to grab him in time to keep his head from smacking into the rock floor. The light where the arrow hit him spread rapidly across his skin, glowing dully through his clothes until Percy was entirely lit up. Then all at once the glow faded, and he gasped for air.

"Percy!" Hazel shouted, dropping to her knees beside him. His head fell heavily into her lap, lolling to the side until she steadied it by pressing her palms against his cheeks. Down the tunnel, a group of ogres were advancing through strips of light about twenty feet away. In the other direction, Thalia charged Circe with Aegis raised, but the witch only laughed and turned to smoke, curling through the tunnel and reappearing directly beside Percy.

"Oh my, look at the color drain from his face," she said, erupting into smoke again as Jason swung his sword through her middle. Her disembodied laughter echoed all around them.

Thalia and Jason turned their attention toward the ogres, their eyes wild and their weapons ready.

"Get him up," Thalia demanded, having to shout over Circe's laughter and the cacophony of the ogres' advance.

"Percy" Hazel tried again, cupping his face, but he wasn't responding. The son of the sea god lay gasping, trembling head to toe, looking pale as death. There was no trace of the arrow in his shoulder, and when Nico pulled the collar of his shirt down, there was no puncture wound. Only a cursive _C _marked on his skin, glowing gently.

"Percy," Jason shouted, looking desperately over his shoulder. The ogres were walking toward them still, apparently aware that they couldn't run well through the tunnels. They had seconds until the fight would break out.

"Get him up," Nico called, grabbing hold of Percy's left arm while Hazel hoisted him up by his right. He cried out in pain, pulling away from Hazel, but he could hardly hold his head up, and his legs were useless underneath him.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Thalia cried. "Seaweed Brain, I swear to the gods if you don't snap out of it—"

"Duck!" Jason cried, swinging his sword to deflect the first axe. They were out of time, and Percy couldn't stay on his feet. Nico turned, working in rhythm with Hazel as the two children of Hades started dragging him down the tunnel, with Thalia and Jason behind them to fend off the ogres.

To Percy's credit, he made what little effort he could to stand. But with his eyes full of static and his lungs full of nothing, nothing, _nothing_, it was a miracle that he could even comprehend the situation. There were too many loud noises all around him to process what was going on, and even though their progress was painfully slow, it felt like Nico and Hazel were flying.

What was worst was the sickening sense of weakness that swelled inside him. It was as if all the strength had left his body, leaving him with quaking muscles and no breath. He felt cold, and he suddenly felt damp, though not in a way he had ever experienced before. He had always loved being in water, and could choose if he wanted to be wet or not; this was different. It was cold and queasy and made him shake harder.

There was a loud noise somewhere behind them, like a roar, and Percy's vision split again. He doubled over, a strangled noise rumbling out of his chest, and Nico nearly fell under his increased weight.

"He's too heavy," Hazel shouted over the din of fighting behind them. "Nico, we can't keep this up!"

Percy looked like he was about to lose consciousness. The pain was so potent on his face that Nico could feel it echoing in his own shoulder, but he refused to let go of his cousin's arm. "We have to keep moving," he managed, grunting as Percy lost his footing again.

He glanced wildly over his and Percy's shoulder in time to see Jason lob the head off of one of the taller ogres. It exploded into dust, but the other beasts kept charging, growing bold against Thalia's intimidating shield. The monsters looked endless.

Then, out of thin air, Circe's face appeared directly behind them. She smiled at Nico, victory and bloodlust in her eyes, and wrapped her arms around Percy's chest from behind.

"I'll be taking this," she said, her smile so impossibly sincere that Nico felt ice in his gut. Hazel shouted something and pivoted, but it was too late. Circe tightened her arms around Percy and in a terrible instant, the two of them twisted into smoke and evaporated right before their eyes.

Jason saw it and shouted Percy's name, alerting Thalia that something was wrong. She deflected a blow with Aegis and turned, but they had no time to react. The ogres kept pressing at them, suddenly growing twice as aggressive, as if they had been holding back until that moment.

They had no choice but to keep moving. Circe's laughter has stopped, gone with the last traces of her and the son of Poseidon. The monsters charged with renewed purpose, and the remaining demigods turned, bursting into a run down the length of the tunnel.

To reiterate: Percy was having a great day, until he got shot by a magic arrow.

X

_Boom. _

_Reviews always appreciated! Expect the next chapter in something like two or three days._


	3. Chapter 3

_Rolling right along, then..._

X

Six turns and one particularly long stretch of straight tunnel later, Nico pivoted mid-run and pulled a huge spire of black rock straight out of the ground behind them. It crushed one ogre against the ceiling and blocked the way for the rest, finally separating the demigods from their bulky pursuers.

The children of the Big Three continued to run until the only sounds were their heavy breathing and footfalls. Only then did they slowed to a stop, standing in silence and panting, staring ahead down the ominous dark tunnel before them. The cracks of light had been left behind three turns ago, and now the only thing that allowed them to see was the glowing of Thalia and Jason's weapons.

No one spoke for a long time, though they all had the same words waiting on their tongues. The empty space where Percy should have been hung between them silently. Nico could still feel Circe's smile crawling under his skin, that look of success clear on her face. She had gotten exactly what she wanted.

Thalia started to pace the width of the tunnel, her eyebrows stitched together. Jason held a strikingly similar expression, though he remained eerily still, glaring ahead into the darkness.

"She just took him," Hazel said quietly, finally breaking the silence. "I had my arm around him, I mean... I had a tight grip on his wrist, and she just..."

"Shadow travel?" Jason looked skeptically toward Nico, who shook his head.

"No. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't shadow travel."

"The dreams," Thalia said quickly, "we all had the same dream. Percy was still in the cave."

Jason looked toward her. "Circe said this place was a 'mousetrap', something to keep us busy. Why stay down here if she got what she wanted?"

Nico set his jaw and studied the basalt beneath his feet. "Percy said he was running through a tunnel in his dream. He didn't have and powers, he was looking for us, and Circe was looking for him."

"He escapes?" Hazel looked imploringly at her brother, who shrugged lamely. Thalia rolled her shoulders, and the faintest trace of a grin flashed momentarily across her face.

"Percy is such a little shit, I wouldn't be surprised."

Hazel shot her a look, the same one she gave anybody who used obscenities in her presence, but she didn't say anything; the situation was too dire. "So, say he gets away," she reasoned. "That's all the more reason to find him. Especially if he doesn't have powers."

"But how?" Jason looked at each of them. "Did anyone see how we find Percy again?"

Silence. Thalia chewed her lip for a moment and sighed. "I felt close to finding him in my dream. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I woke up and thought I had had any other dream about hunting something."

Nico looked up suddenly. "Hunting," he repeated. "That's it."

"He's not game," Thalia said, an edge to her voice. Nico waved a hand at her, looking at nothing in particular as his mind raced.

"We have the best chance of finding someone in these tunnels, even if we have no idea where we are or where to go. Two children of Hades, a Hunter of Artemis, and the guy who toppled the throne of Kronos."

They were silent for a moment, appreciating the weight of their situation. Jason looked back down the tunnel into darkness, his jaw set. "Circe's gunna regret ever dragging us down here."

"Not as much as she's going to regret threatening Annabeth," Thalia agreed, though Nico couldn't tell if she was referring to Percy's vengeance or her own.

"So, speaking of Percy," Hazel sighed, looking down at the shoes on her feet. "... Where do we start?"

X

He felt light, when he woke up, as if a grounding weight had been taken out of him, and he would blow away in the faintest wind. He was cold and weak and shivering, and his muscles felt exhausted. Somewhere to his left, water was running. It was dark.

Percy had woken up in some pretty miserable places, but this time, even though his awakening wasn't immediately noticed, he knew it was the worst of them. Only now that it was absent did Percy realize that he usually walked around with power churning in his gut, like a nuclear reactor. Without it, even before he fully reached consciousness, he knew one thing for certain: he was screwed.

There were lots of voices somewhere beneath him. Gruff and deep and unintelligent, quarreling amongst themselves. The voices were accompanied by the clamor of weapons, metal shifting against rock. They were far enough down that Percy didn't feel immediately threatened, but he could tell that there were more ogres down there than he could take, even if he had his strength.

Carefully, he cracked one eyelid open. The ceiling of the cave stretched high above them like a church cathedral, elegant and freckled with stalactites that seemed to glisten with crystals. Light came from down below, a golden glow that flickered on the cave walls. Torches, maybe, or some sort of fire pit. Standing five feet from him, talking in a low voice to two other women, was Circe. She stood taller than both of them, and together the two unfamiliar women were startlingly beautiful, but their eyes looked hollow. Circe's tone was too hushed for him to hear clearly, but the words 'send a message' made it through the cotton in his ears.

He tried to stay still, but she must have sense that he was awake, because the witch turned with a smile and crossed the small distance between them. She knelt, leaning over him while her silky black hair cascaded over her left shoulder.

"Look who's finally come around," she said, running her fingertips lightly through Percy's bangs, brushing them aside. "Our favorite little piggy."

The other two women were gone when Percy glanced back to where they had been. Where they went, he didn't know; best he could tell, he was lying on top of some tall rock formation with a flattened top, high above what he decided was a large pit full of ogres. Not great.

"Those two front teeth of yours are still crooked, I see," Circe said, flashing him a smile so he could see her perfect white teeth. "I have a little potion to fix that, if you're interested."

Percy had about six different insults ready within a heartbeat, but when he opened his mouth, only a thin groan came out. Circe smiled at him and leaned a little closer, locking eyes with him.

"Feel that, Percy Jackson? That crippling frailty? We have a little term for that in the business," she whispered, leaning so close that Percy flinched and turned his head away when her breath hit his cheek. "We call it _being mortal_."

She leaned upward and sat back on her ankles. Beneath them, a bamboo mat did little to keep small rocks from poking into Percy's back. "It doesn't suit you," she said, pouting with false sympathy and shaking her head. "You look like a drowned kitten."

"Fuck you," he managed, acknowledging that he had never been good at keeping his mouth shut when villains were being villains. He didn't even have the strength to regret it; he just kept the meanest look he could on his face and leveled a glare toward her.

Circe clicked her tongue. "Now Percy, don't be a child. Your part in all this is very simple, actually, since you probably couldn't comprehend much more. All you have to do is lie there and wait for our dear friend Ms Chase to come running down here looking for you."

She said 'Ms Chase' as if the name tasted foul in her mouth. Percy shifted and moved his arms, trying to sit up, but Circe placed her palm on his chest and held him down.

"And she will come running, won't she. Poor thing gave up all that promise and potential so that she could become codependent with men. Foolish little wench."

"You should be afraid," he ground out, pushing her hand off of his chest with some effort. "You make her come all the way down here, she's not gunna show you any mercy."

Circe's eyes suddenly grew hard, and her hand clamped around Percy's throat before he even realized she had moved. He choked, his head knocking back against the ground. When he opened his eyes, Circe's face was directly above his. Suddenly, she didn't look so beautiful.

"I welcome it," she said in a harsh tone. "Let her come with everything she has. I'm the greatest sorceress of all time! One little child of Athena can do nothing to me."

Percy grabbed at Circe's hand to try and earn himself some breathing room, but her grip was harsh. "She did last time," he managed.

For a moment, the hand grew impossibly tight, and static swam into Percy's vision as he choked audibly. His knees pulled up, hips twisting to try and get away, but Circe held him in place as if it were nothing.

"Your usefulness does not extend to physical protection, _boy_. And I've had just about enough of your tongue."

Percy fought for air a moment longer before Circe moved her grip to the front of his shirt and hoisted him clear up off the mat. In one swift movement, she forced his weight over the ledge, and his eyes went wide. The cavern spun, from the ceiling to Circe's wicked face to the pit below. Some distance down, ogres were milling about, sitting around different fires. The side of the rock formation was sloped at about fifty degrees, and Percy rolled hard down the decline. Each small movement to his shoulder caused pain, but the experience as a whole was unpleasant.

He reeled down the slope until reaching a ledge about three feet above the heads of the ogres, where he skid to a stop. For a moment he couldn't find air, his body tense, his mind whirling. The rock felt like it was tilting beneath him; everything hurt. The longer it took him to regain his equilibrium, the more concentrated the areas of pain got, honing in on his shoulder, his elbows, his right knee. His throat felt crushed.

Through eyes half-closed from pain, Percy looked back up the slope and watched Circe vanish into a swirl of smoke that snaked down to him. She reappeared, her dress white as snow, her hair perfect. Percy, covered in dirt from his tumble down the slope, curled on his side, still struggling to breathe.

"I lost my precious island to those damned pirates," Circe said, her voice still hard, but more controlled. "I was forced to retreat back to the ancient lands, to start over. Me, reduced to buying slaves off of more filthy pirates. A brother of your's, no less."

Percy let his bangs fall over his eyes to hide them as he scanned desperately at what little he could see. The running water he had heard earlier was moving somewhere not too far from his feet. He could just see the dark tunnel it vanished into. If he could make it there somehow, he could slip inside and use the water to...

_Mortal_. He certainly felt weak, but did that arrow really strip him of his natural powers? Percy's mind raced, his eyes shifting desperately. Everything hurt.

"My girls have already left to deliver a little message to Ms Chase," Circe said, reclaiming Percy's full attention. "That little necklace you demigods wear should be a nice implied threat. So now, Mr Jackson, we wait. I'll fetch you when I'm ready to begin the show."

Percy glared up at her, lifting himself onto his elbows with some difficulty, still half on his side. Circe stood taller and swept her gaze over the ogres below, who had taken notice of their arrival at the bottom of the slope.

"He's all yours, boys," she said in a diplomatic tone. "No killing, no eating, nothing too damaging. That can wait until our guest of honor arrives."

The ogres stirred excitedly. Percy made his way onto his hands and knees, sitting back on his ankles despite how much it hurt the knee he injured on the way down the slope. He was already out of breath just from sitting up that far. Below, the monsters were looking at him hungrily. Some were grinning; one licked his lips.

"We could have a few fingers," one of them suggested, a brutish thing who was almost as thick as he was tall. "He won't be needin' 'em."

"No," Circe said, her voice so hard that Percy flinched. His shoulder suddenly twisted with pain and he inhaled sharply, looking down toward it. Something was glowing under his shirt, in what he could have sworn looked like the shame of a 'C'. He looked up at Circe, at the way her eyes were glowing with fire, and then at the way the ogres all flinched away, ducking their heads.

"When I'm good at done with him, you can have what's left. But until then, nothing permanent. And _no eating_."

Murmurs of disappointed agreement rippled through the group of ogres below. The glow in Circe's eyes faded slowly, as did the pain in Percy's shoulder, and she looked down at him. The smile curled back onto her lips.

"You be a good little boy, now," she said. The threat that she laced between her words made Percy's jaw tense.

Then, a huge meaty hand wrapped around his elbow, and pulled him right off the ledge, down into the pit of ogres. Despite his twisting, kicking, and swearing, it was as if he weighed nothing; they passed him through the crowd like a sack of garden mulch, pushing, punching, pulling at his hair and clothing, before he was finally hoisted up by an ogre that was at least two heads taller than the other ones. This one did not smile, did not seem to be enjoying the fun.

Mind racing, Percy struck his hand out in the direction of the flowing water. He could lift it up, flood the chamber, get all these monsters off of him. But there was no tug in his gut; the creek didn't react. One of the ogres swat his hand down, laughing at the look of horror and shock on his face. Percy looked wildly toward the huge brute in front of him, holding him up by his underarms as if he were a small child.

The thing only flared his huge nostrils and looked at Percy like he were diseased, and then tossed the poor demigod right over his shoulder.

Still kicking, Percy punched at the ogre's upper back as the monster turned and stomped down a nearby tunnel, completely unaffected by his blows. Just as they exited the cavern, Percy looked up desperately over the heads of the more eager ogres, searching until his eyes locked with Circe's. Her smile turned wicked once more.

"Play nice, my little guinea pig!"

X

"If one more person tells me to calm down, I'm going to start snapping ribs."

Annabeth pivoted and started pacing in the direction she had just come, moving back and forth along the length of the deck at the Big House. She moved with military briskness, her eyes hard with irritation and her hands curled into tight fists. Chiron sighed and lifted his hands apologetically, standing just off the deck in full centaur form.

"I'm not here to ease your stress," he said, his tone soothing but his words hard, unable to completely hide his own concern. Annabeth shot him a quick look, and then doubled back when she saw the look on his face. She stopped pacing, her shoulders slumping down.

"Sorry," she muttered, turning her eyes toward the railing. Chiron lowered his hands and sighed.

"I expect no less of a reaction from you, given the circumstances."

She looked at him closely for a minute, studying him. Chiron was as much a father to her as her own dad, but more intimately aware of the challenges and hardships she'd been through. As one of the older residents, with so many beads on her necklace, it was only natural that they'd know each other well. She felt a wash of guilt for snapping at him.

Still, Chiron's body language made her nervous. For that reason she had avoided his company; anything that added to her own anxiety wouldn't help her think. The way he held his shoulders was familiar, too. Chiron always had proper posture and poise, but when he was especially worried about something, he appeared more rigid. Now they both stood, their breaths measured and their shoulders tight, waiting. Irritated, stressed, and desperate for news. Annabeth took a deep breath.

"Nico said that he, Hazel, and Percy had all shared a similar dream," she said, though it was not new information to either of them. She had repeated what little she knew multiple times, hoping that the story would start to make more sense, but she was too panicked;she had convinced herself that there were still details she had missed.

Chiron nodded patiently, but said nothing. He knew better than to interrupt her mid-thought when she was so upset.

"If Hazel had it too, maybe... Well, they're all children of the Big Three, right? Maybe it has to do with that."

So far, they had blown through five separate books and one nauseatingly frustrating conversation with Mr D in order to figure out what had happened. Percy and Nico's vanishing act had been witnessed by those in the strawberry fields, along with the campers playing volleyball. The closer a camper was to Percy and Nico, the worse their vertigo; a sign, Chiron believed, that it was magic, and not the action of a god.

A summoning spell, Mr D had said, but the suggestion seemed to have unsettled Chiron so greatly that he continued to search for an alternative. He wouldn't specify why until they had flipped through three books, and when he explained himself, Annabeth pulled two more down, joining him in the hope that Dionysus was wrong.

"A summoning spell for the children of the Big Three," Chiron said after a pause, "would require a startling amount of magic. And sacrifice."

He still appeared to not want to talk about it. Annabeth stood still for a minute, staring at nothing in particular, before she sighed and stomped over to the steps, sitting down heavily. Chiron turned toward her but kept some breathing distance between the two of them.

"It's the only thing that could have happened, isn't it," Annabeth asked glumly. Chiron let out a long breath and was quiet for long enough that Annabeth took it as a gentle yes.

"So then," she said, looking up, "it can't just be Nico and Percy. If it was for the children of the Big Three, wouldn't it be all of them?"

Chiron nodded, making a three-fingered claw gesture over his heart. "I fear so. Percy and Nico are the only two who frequent the camp, and they're now both gone. The news that Thalia is missing also supports it."

"And Hazel shared their dream," Annabeth nodded. There was a weighted pause between them, the next question hanging in the air before Annabeth decided to voice it. "So we contact Camp Jupiter. Pray to the gods that Jason and Hazel are there."

It left a bad taste in her mouth, thinking about what that implied. Tensions hadn't entirely relaxed between the two camps. While they weren't toeing the lines of war, they hadn't set up any friendly exchange programs, and they certainly weren't swapping sensitive information. But if Percy, Nico, and Thalia were missing, they had no choice. If Jason and Hazel were still at Camp Jupiter, than maybe their summoning theory was incorrect. If they were missing too, then at least it confirmed what they were working with.

The thought made her shiver. The amount of magic needed for a summoning spell was impressive. She didn't want to think about all the blood that had been spilled in order to summon a demigod children of the Big Three, let alone all of them. There was a lot of power and evil in the world, of that Annabeth was no stranger, but she shuddered to think who would summon up such powerful demigods, and why.

"I suppose an Iris Message is in order," Chiron sighed after another stretch of silence. Annabeth's stormy gray eyes bore holes into the dirt at the bottom of the steps for a moment longer before she looked up, taking a deep breath.

"I'll do it."

X

_Thanks to everyone who reviews! It's really awesome to hear what you guys think, this story has been sitting in my files for so long, it's weird to share it. Will update again in another 2-3 days._


	4. Chapter 4

_Smaller update this time around, but I can't break up the next chapter, so we'll do one short, one long again. Thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter!_

X

Reyna was used to unpleasant surprises. She could handle most news with unphased professionality, maybe a sigh here or there. Actually, if she was going to be honest, it usually involved a sigh.

The changes after the Giant War had come with their fair share of unpleasant surprises and challenges, one of which being the Greek's Iris Message system. She could appreciate how easy it made communicating, and certainly understood why the Greek half-bloods had looked pained at the thought of not being able to use it to contact the Romans. Reyna would have been equally inconvenienced if she had to go from a method of such fast communication to something more reserved.

But the problem with it was that, while the demigods at Camp Half-Blood could contact her easily enough with the Iris Fountain they had given her, she had a much more difficult time contacting them. The fact that denarii didn't work on the fountains was the first hurdle; the second problem was that the connection was just plain lousy when she was the one to make the call.

That said, she had grown decidedly skeptical of the entire method of communication. The same could be said about her opinions of shadow travel, Nico Di Angelo's prefered form of transportation. She had done it twice, and neither experience was enjoyable. It was cold and dark and left her reeling. She had opted out of it after the second time, when they stepped out of a shadow just beneath the lava wall at Camp Half-Blood and her praetor's cape earned a scorch mark.

Reyna was happy to go through her daily routine without either of these things, but after searching for two days to find her fellow praetor and friend, Jason Grace, she found herself desperate. Especially after Hazel Levesque vanished clear out of the barracks, in what two witnesses described as "a swirl of smoke".

She paced in front of the Iris Fountain and rubbed her thumb across the surface of a cold drachma. She had used two already, but she couldn't seem to get through-Iris, apparently, didn't feel the need to connect her call if she wasn't Greek. Frustrating though the shoddy service was, Reyna was quietly relieved. What would she say? That Jason was missing, again, and she didn't suppose they had seen him? What if she came off as accusatory?

Then again, a very small nagging voice wondered if the Greeks did know where he was. He never failed to make his visits to Camp Half-Blood perfectly clear to everyone. The schedule was up in the Principia, after all, and if the stay was more than two or three days, he would check in with the same fountain that Reyna was now pacing back and forth in front of. But Jason's confidence and the positive experiences with the Greeks from the Giant War hadn't obliterated all of the doubt. If anything, it had chased it into the shadows, hiding in corners, lurking in the backs of everyone's minds. The memories of the Argo II attacking New Rome hadn't faded just yet, it seemed.

Besides, the cultural differences between the two camps was enough, if she was being honest. Camp Jupiter was order, precision, discipline. Rank was everything, power was sought after, rules were followed. It worked like a well-oiled machine, all the cogs running together in a practice as old as... Well, as old as Rome.

But Camp Half-Blood was different. Almost entirely so, and it had thrown Reyna for a serious loop when she had seen it all on her first diplomatic visit. Camp Half-Blood was campfire songs and chariot races and canoeing, complete with a volleyball court. The mentality was All For One And One For All, and it explained why Percy hadn't shown much interest in the praetorship when she had first offered it to him all that time ago. Percy had come from a place that felt like a family, not a cohort. In fact, he had described the differences between the camps best, the last time they had discussed it.

Camp Jupiter is a military camp, he had explained, and Camp Half-Blood is a summer camp.

The relaxed nature at the Greek camp made Reyna suspicious, because it wasn't the whole truth. The Greeks liked to laugh and lounge and break rules, but beneath that, they were just as efficient and dangerous and experienced as Reyna's camp. It worried her, as well as others at Camp Jupiter.

She was brooding over all of this when a light appeared beside her, just over the fountain. She stopped short in front of it as an image appeared, sharpening until she was staring at one Annabeth Chase.

"Oh, good," the blonde exhaled, the relief of having caught Reyna temporarily softening her concerned features, "you're by the fountain. We need to talk."

Reyna looked over her shoulder briefly, but the room was still empty. Her two dogs perked upwards at the sound of another voice, their ears flattening as they rose and growled in the direction of the Iris message.

"I was just thinking the same thing," Reyna sighed, turning back toward Annabeth. She didn't even try to keep the exhaustion out of her tone-not when the daughter of Athena sounded exactly the same. "I don't suppose you've had any campers go missing."

Annabeth looked momentarily strained, as though Reyna's comment had delivered news that she had anticipated. "That's the last thing I wanted to hear," she sighed, running a hand through her messy hair. "Let me guess: Jason and Hazel?"

Reyna's chest tightened. Her quiet concerns that the Greeks were in on it started to get louder. "How would you know that?"

Annabeth looked, momentarily, like she wanted to punch something. Apparently, she had been praying for Reyna to say no. Then she schooled her features from pissed back to stressed. "Percy and Nico vanished right before my eyes this afternoon. They had said something about having the same dream, and apparently Nico had spoken to Hazel, because she had it too."

Reyna chewed on this for a moment, absorbing the information as quickly as she could. Unpleasant surprises, and all that. "Jason went missing just yesterday," she admitted. "And Hazel today. Something tells me you have a theory as to why?"

Annabeth pursed her lips and nodded."They're all children of the Big Three," she explained, earning a strange look from Reyna. "The Greek Big Three," she amended, and the two of them took a moment to curse their cultural differences.

"Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," Reyna ventured, earning a nod from the other side of the message. "Are they still children of your Big Three if they're Roman?"

"Same blood," Annabeth sighed. "The Hunters of Artemis reported Thalia missing, too."

"So all of them have just vanished?" Suddenly, something clicked in Reyna's mind that made her chest tighten again. Her found it hard to focus on anything in particular while her mind began to race with the thought that had occurred to her.

"Yes," Annabeth said, "since you just confirmed that Hazel and Jason are missing. We believe it's..."

"A summoning spell," Reyna said gravely, speaking up when Annabeth paused to think of a good way to phrase it. Through the mist, the blonde blinked.

"Yes. You're... familiar with it?"

The question didn't need to be answered, because from the look on Annabeth's face, she'd suddenly figured it out. Reyna set her jaw and looked very closely at the mist in front of her, studying Annabeth's eyes. They seemed to arrive at the same conclusion about five seconds apart, and when Annabeth reached it, she visibly paled, even though the Iris message.

"Unfortunately, yes," Reyna said, her tone hard. "And I think we both have a suspect in mind."

X

Jason could think of exactly thirty-seven different places that he would rather be, and as the silence stretched between the group, that list grew. He took his time with each desired location, considering the weather at each one, the things he could do there, and who he would do them with. Most involved Piper. He knew he should be focusing on the problems immediately in front of him, but the uninterrupted stretch of tunnel was monotonous, and he found his mind wandering.

In front of him, Thalia lead the group quietly around pitfalls and crevasses in the cave floor. Hazel and Nico walked just behind her, the two of them keeping relatively close. Every so often, their hands would link, just long enough to help each other's fingers warm before they would release one another and keep walking. Jason brought up the rear.

No one spoke. Mostly because every time they struck up conversation, they seemed to alert every ogre in the cave system as to where they were. But it had been a good two hours now, and not a single monster had reared it's ugly mug. In fact, it was as if they had all retreated.

Jason considered this. They had things to discuss, after all. For instance, where exactly were they going? Jason understood that Nico and Hazel were better at navigating underground, and that Thalia was a Hunter and could track with amazing precision, but he wasn't happy about being delegated to 'the muscle'. Especially if there was nothing to fight.

"What if we haven't run into any ogres because they're all concentrated around wherever Circe is, and we're moving away from it?"

He didn't try very hard to keep his voice down, which earned him a sharp look from over Thalia's shoulder. Jason ignored it-he hadn't realized how much he needed to hear words spoken out loud until they echoed off the walls around him. From the look on Hazel's face when she glanced back at him, he wasn't the only one.

"That's a bad thing?" Nico muttered, his voice at a safe, quiet volume.

"It is if that's where Percy is," Jason replied. At the front of the precession, Thalia stopped short. He expected some sort of impatient comment, but he stilled when he saw the tension in her shoulders. She didn't turn around right away, her grip tight around the bow in her hand. She took a deep breath, and then turned, her bright blue eyes hot with emotion.

Jason, Nico, and Hazel waited silently for Thalia to say something. Her jaw moved as if she were about to start a sentence and then thought better of it. It happened for a few seconds, her face a non-specific blend of pained emotions, before finally she settled for a sharp exhale.

"That jerk had to go and get shot," she said, her words clipped. "I don't know what that damned arrow did to him or where it went, but I know an easy kill when I see one. Couldn't even stand," she huffed, keeping her tone from wavering, though just barely. "It... It must have taken his powers. He didn't have any in the dream, and now we know why."

"A magic arrow," Hazel asked, though it didn't sound like her question needed answering. Jason watched his sister closely, trying to remember the last time he had seen her so upset. She looked like she wanted to behead something, but underneath the frustration, worry churned on her face.

"Why not," Nico sighed, looking down the tunnel the way they had come. "The amount of magic it must have taken to summon us all here... Not to mention the sacrifice. Circe has to have been planning this all for a while."

"The tunnels to 'keep us busy'," Hazel nodded. "And some sort of cursed arrow, to make sure Percy wouldn't ruin it all for her."

"He's good at that," Nico agreed, his voice quiet and far away. The crease between his eyebrows was not lost on Jason.

"What do you mean, sacrifice," the blond asked, dreading the answer. Nico was still for a moment before looking toward him.

"Summoning spells use a lot of magic, and require a lot of payment. Usually in blood."

The answer wasn't particularly thrilling, and Jason didn't want to linger on the implications. Blood sacrifices usually involved innocent things dying, and even though Octavian had used stuffed animals to read his auguries, something told Jason that the same modern adjustments wouldn't work with the kind of spell Nico was describing.

"Let's stay on task," Thalia said, reining Jason back in from an unpleasant train of thought. "Nico, can you feel if he's still alive?"

Nico pulled out of the same line of thinking and nodded, though the frown seemed to deepen. "Yes, he is. But, just like in my dream, I can't feel his strength."

Thalia was still for a moment, her expression unreadable. "Meaning he has lost his powers."

Nico took an audible breath. "I suppose so. I know you can't all feel it, but demigods walk around emanating a sort of aura. The stronger we are, the more obvious that aura is. Percy's has always been... Well, it's very, very hard to miss, even from far away."

He glanced at Jason as if the same applied to him. The group was silent for a beat before Hazel cleared her throat.

"If he doesn't have his powers, wouldn't that make him... mortal?"

The word hung in the air like some sort of new-found obscenity. Nico nodded slowly.

"I guess that would make sense," Jason said. "If Circe's plan is to lure Annabeth down here with Percy as bait, than she'd have to be careful to make sure Percy can't just turn around and kill her himself."

A faint noise echoed passed, so quietly that they almost missed it. It could have been a rock falling from the ceiling somewhere down the tunnel, but from the way Thalia tensed up and ducked her head, it was something else. No one moved or made a sound for a long few moments. Then, more sounds, still far away. Metal, yelling. Not coming toward them, but somewhere off in the system of caves, something was happening.

"Come on," Thalia said, hefting her bow. "It sounds like Seaweed Brain has done something stupid."

X

_he totally has it's great_


	5. Chapter 5

_I'm awful proud of this chapter, so I'm excited to post it. As far as future updates go, I'm super busy this week moving, so I'll try to remember to upload the next chapter in a few days, but it might be a bit delayed. It's written, don't worry—just a matter of me having the time. _

_In the meantime, let's see what stupid thing Percy did._

X

If he ever needed someone to do his kidnapping for him, Percy would not be calling on any ogres for the job. There were several things wrong with their approach, which he thought were particularly egregious oversights. First of all, if you're going to bind someone's wrists, at least do it behind their back where they can't easily grab at things in front of them. Secondly, use rope that isn't stiff and thick and easy to slip out of.

Don't get it wrong—Percy was grateful that these mistakes had been made. It gave him several cards to play, the biggest being the element of surprise. He was just shocked that the ogres hadn't thought better than to leave him in the corner with easily-escapable binds and a full range of frontal movement. Not that he thought ogres were particularly intelligent—he just expected them to be better villains.

They were lounging now, having established several fires to squat around. The cavern they had carried him to seemed more their style: lower ceiling, worse smell, piles of animal bones lying here and there. In the corners, stacks of bronze spheres the size of soccer balls lay ignored, smoking quietly. Percy made a mental note to avoid them.

They had paraded him in and dropped him unceremoniously in the corner, far from either of the two exits. All the smacks and punches and shoves he had received on the way were catching up with him, turning to bruises under his summer clothes. He was cold and achy and his knee and shoulder hurt. Especially his shoulder. But he was wide awake now, adrenaline rushing steadily in his veins.

It was the stench of rotting animal flesh that was really doing him in. He had managed to position himself on his side so that he wasn't lying on his bad shoulder, but the effort had made him breath harder, and the smell had invaded his senses so thoroughly that it had formed a nasty taste in his mouth. Careful to move slowly as to not regain any unwanted attention, Percy slid his hands down to his available pocket and felt through the fabric at what lay underneath.

No Riptide. That feeling was worse than the smell, but Percy wasn't surprised. He had known Riptide was missing the second he woke up—Circe surely had confiscated it. What bothered him was that it wasn't returning to him. Maybe his new lack of powers was impacting the effects of the enchanted weapon. Either way, Percy couldn't rely on swordplay to get out of this mess.

Why Circe had only taken Riptide and not the other things in his pocket, he couldn't be sure. Maybe it was one of her servants who had searched him, and had only been told to take the sword. He still had his sunglasses, though the stems felt broken in his pocket, probably from his roll down that slope. No doubt they were cracked. Aside from that, he had a few coins, a crumpled twenty dollar bill, and a pack of gum. Percy relaxed his hands slowly onto the ground in front of his hips, careful not to make any sudden movements. The bindings were itchy and he longed to shuck them off, but he had to wait.

No weapon, no easy exit, no godly powers. He tried to remember the last time he had been so screwed, and then thought better of it. Better not open that door.

One of the ogres looked toward him and grunted. The brute was close enough for Percy to hear him when he spoke. "Perfectly good meat," he grunted bitterly. "Jus' lyin' there. How'd she know if we ate a few fingers?"

Another ogre sitting in the same circle swatted him upside the head. "You wanna get turned into a pig? Then we can eat _you_."

"Just wait," another one said, staring directly at Percy. When he realized that the demigod was staring back, he made a show of licking his lips. "When she's done with 'im, we can eat 'em all."

This seemed to placate the first ogre, at least for the moment. They grunted and spat thick wads of Percy-didn't-want-to-know-what into the fire, which made it sputter and sizzle. One of them wiped their running nose with their forearm, and even from the distance he was at, Percy pulled a face and looked away to avoid the sight.

He took a few breaths, trying to ignore the smell, and let himself calm down a bit. His heartbeat was steady, his mind focused and sharp. He was at a serious disadvantage with a few very inconvenient handicaps, but he could make this work. He'd survived Gabe's abuse—he could manage some ogres.

As he studied the group, about twenty monsters in all, he recognized that they kept glancing at him. They tried to hide it from each other, but they all appeared to be thinking the same thing: maybe they could just take a bite out of his arm, or his thigh. Just one little bite. Circe would never notice, right?

Percy stilled, an idea coming to him. Very slowly, he reached back up to his pocket and pulled out the pack of Big Red gum. Using all his focus to steady his hands, he pulled out a single slice and slid the pack back into his pocket. He took his time drawing his hands up to his mouth, worried that moving too quickly would alert the ogres that something was up. They weren't that smart, but they kept glancing over at him, and he didn't want more bruises than he already had. He certainly didn't want anything taking a bite out of him.

Quietly, he unwrapped the stick of gum and stuck it in his mouth. He hadn't been considering the flavor; so focused on going unnoticed, the sharp cinnamon surprised him. He blinked in relief—anything beats the aftertaste of breathing dead animal smell. Then he rested the side of his head against the floor, and folded his arms in front of his face, hoping that it looked natural.

His heart rate began to quicken. If he was going to pursue this plan, there were three different windows of opportunity to get caught. And since he was already chewing the gum, there was no backing out.

The first window involved one of the ogres noticing the change in smell coming from his direction. Maybe they would notice immediately and stomp over to see what was up. In that case, he had half a chance of backing out of the plan, assuming they accepted his "I just wanted some gum" excuse.

Percy kept very still and listened, staring intently at the bindings around his wrists. There was no obvious movement among the ogres. A few of them sniffed the air, curious about the new smell, but they didn't get up from their fires. The big guy—the stoic one who had carried Percy from Circe's cavern to this one—turned and looked toward him for a long, tense moment, before turning back to the fire.

Percy felt a small part of him relax. The first window had passed. Unfortunately, it was the second one that was probably going to get him killed.

He took a few deep breaths, making sure to exhale as much cinnamon breath as he could. He paced himself, watching the ogres gradually adapt to the new smell. Then he carefully took the gum out of his mouth, stuck it against the rock floor in front of him, and began to ease his wrists out of the binds.

_This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid_, he told himself, making it into a mantra as he freed his wrists. They were rubbed red in the faint light. The ogres seemed to be focusing on the fires now, as though the smell of cinnamon was less tempting than the smell of regular half-blood. Weird. Still, Percy wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He'd been saved by ridiculous plans too many times to let something as small as an ogre's palette throw him off.

_Now or never, Jackson_, he thought, taking a deep breath. When he was certain that there were no ogres paying any direct attention to him, he slowly rose to his hands and knees.

His shoulder screamed—his knee throbbed. In general, his body protested, but he kept his movements as steady and deliberate as he could. Up onto his feet—no shoes made his steps almost entirely silent, and he took a minute to think well of Hazel for not wearing shoes that morning.

The stoic ogre sniffed loudly, and Percy's eyes snapped over to him. The brute's eyebrows narrowed and his eyes lifted away from the fire. Before they could swivel toward him, Percy saw the second window start to open, and he moved. With all reserved strength, he bolted for the far entrance to the cavern, moving swiftly and quietly across the rocks. The shadows helped provide him with cover, and for a terrible beat, the stoic ogre couldn't seem to find him. By the time he realized that it was because the demigod was on the move, Percy was already at the cave entrance.

The ogre let loose an awful, bone-shaking roar and rose to his feet, setting off a ripple effect through the other ogres. They all let out grunts and shouts of surprise, but they didn't know why they were upset just yet. It wasn't until the stoic one shouted "The runt is fleeing!" that the others began to move.

Percy was already flying down the tunnel.

Several times he stumbled, fighting hard to find his footing, but it came naturally to him, to run this way. The tunnel seemed to be relatively straight and pitfall-free, so he didn't trip on anything. By the time the ogres started spilling into the mouth of the tunnel, far behind him, he was already far enough ahead to have a moment to think.

Okay, third window of opportunity for his plan to fail. This one mostly held the risk of him tripping, or making a wrong turn and finding a dead end. Trying to stay positive—the implications of getting caught again seemed dismal and painful—he pulled the pack of gum out of his pocket and grabbed at another piece while he ran.

He tried to ignore his knee. After a few moments of running, the pain grew steady and he figured out how to manage it. The same could be said for his shoulder. It was his throat that surprised him; it ached from when Circe had choked him, and the sudden activity wasn't helping. Still, he shoved a piece of gum in his mouth and sprinted as best he could through the darkness.

Percy chewed for a few seconds and then stooped mid-run and grabbed up a stone roughly the size of a baseball. Pulling the gum out of his mouth, he stuck it to the rock and looked around wildly. To his right about five feet ahead, the mouth of a smaller tunnel waited.

He picked up the pace and chucked the rock clear down the new tunnel with all his might. The movement bit at his shoulder and he sucked a breath in through his teeth, but he didn't have a moment to spare—the ogres were behind him, their weapons catching noisily on the cave walls as they stumbled after him.

He grabbed up another rock, shoved a new piece of gum in his mouth, and kept running. When he came to the next side tunnel, he stuck the gum to the rock in and threw it down the dark shute as best he could, listening to it clatter away. Behind him, he could hear the ogres reach the last tunnel and stop, confused. Their sense of smell was torn between different two directions.

He'd just have to hope that they would split up and follow the fake trail. He started running again, repeating the process with each tunnel he came across. One piece of gum, one rock, one throw. By the twelfth tunnel, his throat felt tight. His breaths were strained, he had developed a limp, and he couldn't throw the rocks nearly as hard as he could at the beginning. On top of that, he was running out of gum.

On the upside, the noise of pursuing ogres had lessened considerably. What had started as twenty loud, fumbling monsters had been reduced to what sounded like five or six, and they were some distance behind him.

Percy turned and kept going. He had to stop soon—his stamina, it seemed, had gone the way of the dodo along with his god-given powers. Were all mortals this lacking in the endurance department?

He passed two more tunnels, and rid himself of two more slices of gum before he finally felt like he couldn't throw any more rocks. Breathing hard and refusing to acknowledge that the sound his throat was making was an awful lot like a wheeze, Percy pocketed the near-empty pack of gum and took off down a random tunnel. He ducked under a low outcrop of rock, turned a corner, and stumbled.

The deja vu hit him so hard that he nearly face planted. The tunnel, the panic, the feeling of being helpless and chased—it was all exactly the way it had been in the dream. He could feel the very distinct desire to find the others, along with the very real fear of being jumped by an ogre. Blinking owlishly, Percy tried to resume his brisk pace, but his knee spiked with pain each time he put weight on it, and his throat was killing him. So there was one difference between reality and the dream: in the dream, he had been running. In reality, he was limping, clutching his arm and flinching as he stepped on sharp rock after sharp rock.

Now would be a good time to have shoes, he decided. And some ambrosia. And his powers.

Things got quiet, then. The distant clatter of ogres was falling behind him with each corner he took. The longer he stayed on his feet, the more lost he got, and the more distance he put between himself and the harsh face of that stupid stoic ogre. That was the one Percy was worried about; he seemed to be some sort of leader among the others.

Why were they working with Circe, he wondered? She hated men. He was _thirteen_ when she turned him into a guinea pig, and even then she had acted as though his sex was unforgivable. What would drive her to tolerate a bunch of wretched ogres?

Then again, he reasoned, why hadn't she used her charmspeak on them? Or turned Jason and Nico into rodents when she first revealed herself? Percy had no idea how she had gotten them to wherever in Hades they were, but something was wrong with the whole picture. Usually, when bad guys didn't play their cards right away, it was because they had something bigger planned.

His mind flashed to Annabeth. He hoped with all his remaining strength that she wouldn't try to come find him, and yet, part of him hoped she would. Because if there was one thing that Percy knew not to cross, it was a pissed-off Annabeth. And part of him really wanted to see her kick Circe in the face.

He would have continued to brood over Annabeth, but the sound of something to his immediate left pulled him right out of his head and sent him reeling away from the noise. In the darkness of the tunnel, he could hardly see what had made it. A shape against the tunnel wall, four feet away. Percy backed up until he was pressed against the other wall, his mind racing. He had no weapon, and he was afraid to look for one, as if removing his eyes from the dark shape would give it the chance to lunge for his jugular.

But the shape didn't move. Not at first, at least. When it did, it was liking watching a shadow peel off the wall—the dark shape pulled forward from top to bottom, and out of the black, a face twisted into view.

"Follow," a voice rasped, sending a crackle of ice up Percy's spine. His eyes were wide, realizing that he couldn't fight the thing even if he wanted to. But the shadow didn't lunge—rather, it peeled the rest of the way off the wall and drifted down the tunnel before stopping and lingering at a new tunnel entrance about ten feet away.

Percy stayed where he was and watched the shadow for a few long moments. He didn't move until he heard a distance cry somewhere behind him—the ogres were getting frustrated in their search.

The cold shock up his spine felt familiar, at least. Something about it reminded him of Nico—of the cold snap he knew from shadow travel, or the way that Nico summoned ghosts. The thought inspired some optimism in him. Maybe Nico had managed to summon a ghost to help him.

Percy limped down the tunnel to where the shadow floated next to the entrance of the new cave. When he stopped, breathing hard, he tried to get a good look at the thing's face, but its features seemed to twist and change nonstop. He narrowed his eyes, looking down the tunnel before turning his focus back to the shadow.

"Who are you," he asked, his voice strained. The shadow stared at him, it's face changing before his eyes.

"Offering... Help," it rasped, and once again Percy tensed at the cold that washed over him. He wanted to ask more, but the shadow was growing harder and harder to see. Then, before his eyes, the thing simply vanished, and Percy was left alone in the tunnel again.

He looked down the dark tunnel for a few beats before glancing over his non-injured shoulder.

The ogres would find him, he realized. He could run as far as he wanted, he might even make it a day or two on his own, but they knew more about the tunnels than he did, and if they didn't find him, Circe's magic would. The image of her erupting into smoke and appearing right in front of him at the bottom of the slope flashed through his mind, and he wondered which was scarier: having an army of ogres manhandle him twice in one day, or having Circe find him herself.

He turned and started down the new tunnel.

X

_Out of the frying pan…_


	6. Chapter 6

_Yo I'm still alive. And so is Percy, in case you were wondering. Let's see what these dorks are up to._

X

Annabeth had mistimed Piper's arrival by three minutes. She had figured, with the speed that news traveled through camp, the two of them would meet up somewhere between the Big House and the Athena cabin, but instead of running into her on the way, Annabeth discovered Piper sitting on her bunk, waiting.

"I'm going with you," she said matter-of-factly. Her arms were crossed solidly over her chest, her posture straight and unwavering; she had had lots of practice putting her foot down with Leo.

Annabeth took a deep breath and let her shoulders slump on the exhale. Her mind was reeling from her conversation with Reyna and it's implications. She didn't have the will to fight with Piper about anything.

"You don't even know where I'm going. I don't even know where I'm going."

Piper crossed her arms over her chest and sat up straight. "It doesn't matter where. What matters is that our friends need help. And so do you, by the way."

Annabeth walked passed her to a desk beneath a wall of books and pulled a drawer open, rooting around the once-organized contents. "Well, seeing as you're not using charmspeak, it's probably fair to guess that you already know I'm going to say yes."

Piper relaxed, her arms unwinding and falling to her sides. She gripped the edge of the mattress and looked uneasily around the cabin. "I wouldn't use charmspeak on you," she insisted. "You know that."

Annabeth found what she was looking for and stood upright with a sigh. "Yeah, sorry," she said, trying to backtrack and decide if what she had said was uncalled for. Piper stood, shrugging it off. She crossed to the desk, letting the silence build between them, and looked at the bottle in Annabeth's hand.

"Vitamins?"

"Mm," Annabeth nodded, though she seemed particularly unhappy about it. "Hermes' special multivitamin brand. Got the bottle refilled a while ago, but I hoped I'd never have to use them."

Piper looked up from the bottle and caught a glimpse of the anxiety on Annabeth's face before the blond forced it away. "What do they do?"

"Not entirely sure what the extent of their use is," Annabeth admitted, stepping out from around the desk and crossing back to her bunk. "But I know from experience that they can reverse transformation spells."

Piper watched Annabeth as she pulled an empty backpack out from under her bed and dropped it onto the mattress. With an eyebrow arched, she stepped up beside Annabeth at her dresser and tried to catch her eye, but the blond was avoiding it. "What kind of transformation spells?"

The look of anxiety flashed back across her face, and this time Annabeth didn't try to hide it. She glanced at Piper before pulling a drawer open beneath the bed and tugging out a few items of neatly-folded clothing.

"When Percy and I were younger, back before the Titan War, we got stranded out in the Sea of Monsters. And of all the places we could have washed up, we ended up on Circe's island."

She stuffed the small change of clothes into her bag and reached for the travel-sized first aid kit on the dresser. Piper stared at her.

"The Circe? The ancient sorceress?"

Annabeth made a face, but nodded. "More like a witch. She used her charmspeak to separate Percy and I, and then she turned him into a guinea pig."

The corner of Piper's mouth twitched. "A guinea pig?"

Annabeth tucked the first aid kit in between a roll of duct tape and a length of rope. When she didn't smile, Piper let it go. "The vitamins saved him?"

"Yeah, and the rest of the guinea pigs in the cage. Which happened to be Blackbeard and his crew. Who destroyed the island and sent Circe packing, along with her students and servants. Two of which, we know."

Piper stared at her without any specific expression, watching Annabeth pack the rest of her bag. Then, with widening eyes, she said, "Reyna."

"Yes," Annabeth confirmed. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but decided against it, which gave Piper enough time to connect the dots on her own.

"... You're thinking Circe is behind the disappearances?"

Annabeth nodded, zipping her bag closed. "Unfortunately, yes. Best we can figure, they vanished because of a summoning spell, which takes an awful lot of magic, and there are only so many people out there who can do it. That, and Reyna thinks it's her too."

"You've spoken to Reyna already?"

Annabeth nodded and checked the different pockets of her backpack to make sure she had everything she needed. Then she checked them again, and stood with a frown on her face, trying to think of what else she might regret not having with her later. After a pause, she pulled the multivitamins back out of her bag and turned the bottle over in her hand.

"What does Reyna plan on doing," Piper asked carefully, trying to guess what Annabeth was thinking and coming up with nothing. Annabeth stared at the bottle for a minute longer, lost in thought, before snapping back to reality.

"She's going to contact her sister and try to figure out where Circe might be. Far as either of them know, she's definitely not on her old island, but Reyna seemed to think she wasn't in the Ancient Lands anymore, either."

Piper took a deep breath. The two of them stood side-by-side in the stillness of the cabin, both staring at the bottle of vitamins in Annabeth's grasp.

"... Do you think they're alright?" Piper asked, staring at the logo on the bottle. Annabeth sighed and relaxed her arm, dropping the vitamins back into her bag and zipping it closed.

"I have no idea. They could all be rodents. Optimistically, at least they're collectively the most powerful demigods around."

Piper nodded. It seemed awfully suicidal that someone would gather all the children of the Big Three into the same place, but she could at least hope that it gave them the advantage.

A rapid knock on the cabin door pulled them out of their conversation. Before they could react, the door flew open, and Malcolm burst in. "Annabeth," he gasped, leaning forward with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. "This... Showed up... For you," he huffed, holding his hand out. His eyes were wild with panic.

Annabeth stepped forward and swiped the thing out of his hand. She looked down at it for a still moment before realization set in and her eyes went wide.

Piper stepped forward. Clasped in Annabeth's hand was a camp necklace with several year's worth of beads on it. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was the right number of beads to match one of their missing friends.

"Percy," Malcolm panted, still struggling to regain his composure. "Two witches showed up and left it here," he explained, "along with this."

Annabeth snatched the scroll out of Malcolm's hand before Piper even realized he was holding it. Clutching the beads tight, the daughter of Athena unrolled the scroll and stared at it, her eyes burning as her mind raced. Piper leaned forward to read over her shoulder.

_"What a lovely little mortal he makes_," it read in what was possibly the most elegant handwriting Piper had ever seen. "_Vulnerable and defenseless, like he deserves. If you care for his life or the lives of the others, I expect your audience by sunrise at the Mammoth's heart. And do hurry, dear,_" the letters seemed to curl with sarcasm, "_the longer it takes, the more our darling guinea pig will suffer._"

A loud silence hung between them. Annabeth read and reread the letter, her face growing increasingly angry and anxious as her eyes drove back and forth over the words. Then, more suddenly than Piper had anticipated, her head snapped up.

"I'm going to _kill her_."

X

Hazel had mixed feelings about wearing Percy's shoes. For two obvious reasons: on one hand, it was because of her that Percy was barefoot on top of everything else he must have been dealing with; on the other, her feet were warm and dry and safe in his sneakers. But the real reason that she was currently brooding over was a bit less concrete.

Somehow, Hazel believed that as long as she had Percy's shoes, they'd find him. Having some physical item of his made him feel closer, like he was still within reach. On top of that, she found confidence in telling herself that Percy would just have to stay alive so that she could return his shoes. No dying until all articles of footwear were returned to their rightful owners.

They had killed five different ogres since they had turned back. Unarmed, Hazel could do little besides lift up veins of gold from the ground to trip the monsters. She felt pretty useless, but she decided to focus on moving ahead. The tunnels were much larger now, and they had to meander around stalagmites and large rock pillars, but the added formations gave them more cover. With adrenaline sharpening their focus, they had managed to catch every single ogre off guard. It was as if the monsters weren't even anticipating running into them.

Which probably meant that Thalia was right, and Percy had done something stupid. The ogres weren't looking for the other demigods-they were hunting for Percy. It was silly to think he'd have a plan, but if Hazel could confidently say one thing about the son of Poseidon, it was that he was awe-inspiring when he was backed into a corner. Optimistically, he was doing alright.

They darted around a corner into a massive cavern with a ceiling full of sharp hanging spikes. Hazel could immediately sense something was wrong with the place, as if little ice crystals were forming in her stomach. Nico seemed to feel it too, because he slowed up momentarily, causing Jason to almost run smack into him.

"This place," Nico trailed off, looking around with panic suddenly in his features. Thalia continued to forge ahead, only sparing him a glance.

"Keep moving," she hissed. Nico swallowed and started forward again, but he didn't look happy about it. Behind him, Jason glanced between the two children of Hades with concern. Hazel shrugged a shoulder at him.

"What is it," she whispered as they moved, their quiet footsteps hardly making a sound in such a big room. Nico swallowed.

"There's been death here, recently."

Thalia stopped, suddenly, and turned toward him. Her eyes glinted with something strange-anxious aggression. "Percy?"

Hazel hadn't considered it, but at the sound of the name, her chest tightened. Nico shook his head.

"No, not Percy. More than him... a lot of death."

That didn't help make Hazel feel better, but her brother was right. There was a lingering smell of blood in the air, however faint, but strong enough that both Thalia and Jason could smell it. The four of them grew very quiet for a moment, standing with tension between their shoulders, before Jason adjusted his grip on his sword and set his jaw.

"We can't stop now," he said, glancing over his shoulder the way they had come. Thalia gave a short nod, and they started moving again.

They didn't have much direction. They had been following a trail of ogres, but it had been at least fifteen minutes since they had run into one, and the ugly thing didn't give them much to go off of before they blasted him to dust. Something about cinnamon.

Thankfully, they didn't wander aimlessly for long. The cavern wall to their far right was freckled with different sized holes, some at ground level, some as high up as the curve in the ceiling. Most of them looked like they could be tunnels, and as they snuck toward it, hidden among the boulders and stalagmites, they watched ogres poke out of several of the holes, all at different levels.

"That miserable little_ runt_," one of them bellowed when it spotted a few of it's brethren coming out of a lower tunnel. "We find him and break his legs!"

There was a general noise of agreement as the ogres thrust their weapons in the air, frustrated and eager for revenge. The four demigods ducked down behind a cropping of rock and peered through the maze of stalagmites to where the ogres were gathering.

"Definitely sounds like Percy's been up to something," Jason whispered.

"It'll make him harder to find," Thalia said, though it sounded like it was more to herself than the others. Hazel narrowed her eyes and watched as the monsters began to rally around a particular ogre, taller than the rest, with hard set eyes and faded tattoo sleeves. His face sent static up her spine.

"Shut up," the brute spat, his stoic features flashing with anger. His voice was so strong that the demigods ducked down beneath the rock cropping a bit more, nervous energy growing within them. The other ogres lessened their cries for blood and lowered the weapons that they were hoisting in the air.

"The runt can't be far," the stoic ogre said, his voice grating and heavy in their ears. "You find him, you bring him directly to me. No eating any of him, unless you want the witch woman to turn you into our next dinner."

The ogres shifted silently. If they didn't like what the stoic one was saying, they made no move to object. Beside Hazel, Thalia had silently knocked a bow, taking aim at the enemy and holding there, perfectly still. Her face looked pained, but mostly angry. Not for the first time, Hazel wondered what was going through her mind.

"He must have gone east," one of the ogres said, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. "Into the dark tunnels. We can weed him out if we go along the river."

"No," the stoic one grunted, wrinkling his crooked nose. "We smoke him out. Bring him spluttering for air, right to us."

This idea seemed to make the others happy, their faces twisting with cruel smiles. Thalia's pull on the arrow tightened a bit, but after a breath, she eased it out of the bow and slid it back into her quiver. She looked about ready to snap a neck.

"East," she whispered, so quietly that Hazel almost missed it. "We have to get to him before them."

"Thin the herd," Jason replied, locking eyes with his sister. Then he looked at Hazel, and in turn Nico, and silently, the four of them agreed on the plan. Thalia returned her arrow to the bowstring, pulling back with a deep breath. Jason lifted his sword.

Hazel looked at Nico. Neither of them had weapons, and they were about to charge into a group of eleven armed ogres. Thalia exhaled long and slow, taking perfect aim. Jason's eyes grew hard, as if his focus was shifting entirely to what he was going to kill next.

Then, before either could move, the echoing of a distant yell filled the cavern. The ogres all turned suddenly toward the wall of tunnels, and Jason's sword dipped a fraction. Thalia's breath hitched, and she lowered her arrow.

The yell was, without a doubt, Percy. It lasted a few seconds, loud and clear despite the distance it had traveled, and as the sound burst out of one of the tunnels, it sent the ogres into a frenzy. They scrambled over one another to reach one of the tunnels above their heads. Hazel watched with wide eyes as a few of them reached it, the others racing into the tunnels below.

"Percy," Nico whispered, his voice tight. Beside him, quick as lightening, Thalia lifted her bow, aimed, and loosed the arrow that she had been holding earlier. It shot through the air in a brilliant streak of silver light, headed for the heart of the stoic ogre.

A fist snatched it right out of the air. The large ogre had turned in the last second and caught Thalia's arrow. His eyebrows were set low over his eyes, casting them with shadow. He looked up, out into the cavern in the direction they were hiding. For a moment he was still, staring almost directly at them with his terrible face, before a smile pulled back his lips.

Or, at least, it looked like a smile. His sharpened teeth made the grin so wicked that it could have also been a snarl, but the way his eyes gleamed, Hazel knew there was mockery in the expression.

When he spoke, his voice was strong enough to reach over the scrambling of the other ogres without him having to yell. "I'll think of you when I'm breaking his legs," he chided, before breaking the arrow in his grip and turning toward the tunnels. In minutes, the ogres were gone, their stomping and crashing fading into the darkness.

Hazel wasn't immediately sure of what she was most afraid of: the threat, or Thalia's reaction. Without even looking she could feel the tension and anger radiating off of the daughter of Zeus, along with small arcs of electricity. Clearly, the concern for Percy was in all of them, but Thalia looked like she was inches away from charging after the stoic beast and killing him with her bare hands.

Instead, she leapt up onto the rock and stood in a wide stance, breathing deeply. Her posture was hard and twitching, ready to move while she waited for the others to climb up on the rock.

Surprisingly, Nico spoke first. "We can't go right in after them."

"No," Jason agreed, standing beside his sister, "but we have to."

"How will they smoke him out without anything to burn," Hazel asked, stopping on Jason's opposite side, safe from Thalia's swinging range.

"Smoke bombs," Nico sighed, "or something similar. We have to get around them before they get to Percy."

Thalia broke out of her tense pose and leapt off the rock onto the cave floor. "Good," she said, her tone harsh, "I need to kill something."

X

_Ain't nobody fuckin' with Thalia's clique. _

_Is anyone still reading this? I have more written, I'll update if people are actually out there and curious about it._


	7. Chapter 7

_Holy hot damn, that last chapter got such an awesome response, you guys are kickin'. I'll find the time to keep writing and updating this, then. What are weekends without casual fanficin'? _

_**REGARDING HOUSE OF HADES**__: Someone asked about this, so here's what I have to say. I have read HoH, and it was awesome, but for two reasons, I'll be sticking to the fic canon and not incorporating HoH into it. Reason 1: Not everyone has read HoH yet and I don't want to spoil anything so quickly. Reason 2: It would be hard, at this point, to go in and readjust the canon to try and fit in the things that happened in HoH. I'll allude to them, but they won't be explicit or obvious to anyone who hasn't read the book. So, for those of you looking for it, you can probably read between the lines and see it, if you can't already. But I'm going to roll with what I have, just to keep things fair and consistent._

_Anyway, let's see what our favorite dumbass is up to. Thanks for sticking around to find out!_

X

Of all the things he could be thinking about, Percy was wondering if dragons liked gold because of it's monetary value, or simply because it was shiny.

That isn't to say that he hadn't already gone over all the more serious, appropriate subjects. Was the shade he had seen tricking him, and leading him to an agonizing death? Granted, the tunnel that the shadow had shown him was taking forever to get through, but who knew, maybe after a few miles it would open into a lava pit. Or, magma, he figured. Magma was underground.

He wasn't thinking about the others, either, or even Annabeth, though there was always some small echo of her voice in the back of his head, telling him to _stop that_ and calling him Seaweed Brain. Even now, he could imagine her reacting to his curiosity about dragons. _Percy, I swear to my mother if you don't cut the crap and focus..._

Thinking about Nico and the others, though thoroughly tempting, only served to make him worry. He had to tell himself that they were fine and together, and that they were looking for him; the rest was out of his hands. His hands, that were currently numbed with cold, like the rest of him. Curling his fingers, Percy pushed them deeper into the pockets of his black knee-length shorts and sniffled.

Some time not too long ago, Annabeth and he had been sitting by the canoe lake early in the morning. It wasn't his idea to get up before sunrise, but she had insisted that they would only find peace if they went before the other campers got up. While they were sitting there, his arms wrapped around her shoulders from behind, they started talking about water, and Annabeth had said something interesting. _50/50/50_, she had called it. An old sailor's saying, that you had a fifty percent chance of surviving for fifty minutes in fifty degree water. Percy, of course, had never heard of it, because he had never had to worry about drowning or freezing in water.

Now, he thought glumly, he wasn't so lucky. He wondered if the same set of fifties applied if the individual in question was limping through a cave. After all, he was freezing cold, damp, and exhausted. He couldn't stop shivering, and it was starting to move to his teeth, making them chatter in his skull like those annoying little wind-up toys. Thinking about it made him miserable, just like thinking about his knee, or his shoulder, or his throat. Just like thinking about Thalia and Nico and Hazel and Jason. Or his shoes.

So instead, he thought about dragons. They did live in caves, after all, so it was at least mildly appropriate. Percy limped down the gentle decline and sucked a sharp breath through his teeth when he stepped on a particularly sharp rock.

He was considering different types of dragons, and how that might impact their take on gold, when he saw a light ahead of him. It flickered into existence slowly, but the tunnel was so dark that it was immediately noticeable. Stopping short, Percy leaned against the wall for support and hoped he hadn't been seen.

About twenty feet in front of him, a woman stood in a simple white gown, holding a small candle for light. Her brown hair was pulled back into a simple braid that fell over her shoulder. Around her neck, a circular silver pendant hung above her heart. She was peering into the darkness in his direction.

"Hero?" She whispered it so softly that Percy almost didn't hear it. "Are you there?"

He said nothing, his heart pounding in his ears. If she couldn't hear his chattering teeth, he wasn't going to do her any favors by answering.

The woman glanced nervously over her shoulder and wet her lips. "Percy Jackson," she whispered again, this time sounding a bit more brave. "I mean you no harm. I come to help, and ask for help in return."

Percy watched her closely, but she made no move toward him. She held her arms close to her body, lifting the candle like she wasn't sure if she should be touching it. She looked... frightened.

"Your friends are looking for you," the woman spoke again, still not sure if she was speaking to anyone or just herself. "I can help you find them. I really mean you no harm at all. My only desire is to help you." Then, after a beat, she stood a bit taller and took a breath. "I swear it on the Styx."

Percy blinked. He was used to traps, but even the fiercest monsters he had come across didn't take oaths on the River Styx lightly. After another moment of silence, he glanced over his shoulder, and then pushed off the wall.

"How can you help me," he asked, his voice a pained rasp. He winced, not entirely surprised that speaking hurt. The woman, on the other hand, seemed both panicked and relieved that he spoke.

"I thought you were there," she whispered, before clearing her throat. "I can give you something for the pain, and for the cold."

"I don't think ambrosia will help," he replied, limping forward a few paces until she could just make him out in the darkness. "Mortal, and all that."

She shook her head, something like sympathy on her face. "No, it will not. But even mortals have ways of dealing with pain."

Upon closer inspection, Percy realized that the braid over her shoulder was in fact the strap of a bag. The woman eased her hand back into it, careful not to make any sudden movements. Percy's chest tightened and he inched backwards, but instead of the knife he anticipated seeing, she pulled out a dark gray hoodie. She held it out to him and offered a very small smile.

He was too cold not to accept. Cautious about his limp, he moved into range and took it from her hand. A story flashed through his mind, something about Hercules and a shirt that had been poisoned with something or other, but he was too raw from the cold to let it stop him. He paused for only a moment and then unzipped it and pulled it on, taking a small breath of relief. It was already warm.

Percy studied the woman closely as he zipped up the hoodie. Her face was a simple kind of beauty, the kind he would often see on statues of nymphs or mortals. She looked nervous, but not defensive, as though he wasn't the one she was worried about.

"Why help me," he asked, choosing as few words as he could for the sake of his throat. The woman avoided eye contact. The hoodie wasn't burning his skin yet, and he slowly let himself relax into the warmth.

"You're the only one who can help," she replied, her tone quiet and cautious.

_Offering... Help_, the shade had whispered after showing him the tunnel. Percy felt a chill travel up his spine. "Help with what," he asked, but the woman shook her head quickly and pulled something else out of her bag, balancing the candle awkwardly.

"You can't let her win," she answered, handing him a small package wrapped up with dried paper and tied with twine. Percy took it uncertainly and looked between it and her.

"I didn't plan on it," he muttered, swallowing thickly. "Who are you?"

The woman looked once again over her shoulder, paler than she was a moment ago. "A servant of Circe. A slave. But not without free will," she insisted, turning back and looking at him directly for the first time. "She... She did a terrible thing, to bring you here."

The package didn't seem to fit right in his hands, somehow. Percy shifted, readjusting his bare feet on the rough ground. "What do you mean?"

"The summoning spell, to bring you and the other demigods to this place. It requi-" She paused, choking a bit on the words, "required a large sacrifice."

His stomach felt heavy as the implications dawned on him. Before he could ask her to continue, she stepped a bit closer, lowering the candle. "Us," she whispered, a tremor in the word. "She sacrificed _us_."

Percy stared at her. He was just about to ask if she was a ghost as well when he remembered the shade from earlier.

"Her slaves," he guessed, his voice hardly audible. "The shade I saw earlier. Led me to you."

The woman looked pained, almost to the point of tears. But she nodded. "She used the others as a blood sacrifice, to summon you here. Please, you must stop her."

The woman lowered her face so that the tears sitting on her lashes fell. Before Percy could react, she handed him the shrinking candle and lifted the silver pendant from around her neck.

"Take this," she said, lowering it over his head. Her fingers lingered on the chain before she dropped it around his shoulders. Then her hands found either side of his face, and she locked eyes with him again. "It will hide you from her. Please, Percy Jackson, do not let her win."

Then the woman's fingers slipped off of his cheeks, and she dashed up the tunnel the way he had come, into the darkness. Percy stood there with the small candle, staring after her, unable to react. It was only after a moment of complete stillness that he came to his senses, and blew the candle out.

The package weighed heavily in his hand while the thin trail of smoke slithered away from the candle wick. He wasn't sure what to do-open it and see what was inside, or keep moving? Momentarily, he wished he still had the light from the candle, but he felt exposed with it lit. Instead, he let his eyes readjust to the darkness. He pushed the small package into one of the hoodie's pockets and tightened his grip around the candle. He couldn't stop now.

He walked for a long while, thinking about the woman. How nervous she had been, despite her determination. The oath she had taken on the Styx-that was desperate. Percy didn't have a weapon, and he was injured, but she had wanted his trust. His help._ Don't let her win._

He tried not to think about the slaves Circe had killed, but he couldn't help it. Innocent people, bound to an arrogant witch, slaughtered so that Percy could spend the day running from ogres in a cold wet cave. It made him feel sick, if not responsible for their deaths. This time, thinking about dragons didn't help to distract him.

She told him that his friends were looking for him. That meant that the others were still alright. Surely, if Percy would keep moving, they'd eventually find him. In the meantime, he would just have to be cold and miserable on his own.

The hoodie helped. After a while of limping, he couldn't ignore the idea that maybe there was something in the package that could help his pain. He finally stopped and pulled the small package out of his pocket, trading it for the candle. Huddling against the cave wall, he untied the twine with awkward, numb fingers and let the paper fall open in his palms.

Inside was a small twist container the width of a fifty-cent piece, a handful of berries, a small compass, a few matches wrapped in more dry paper, and a small cork bottle with water inside. Not much, but certainly more than he had. Deciding that he didn't have the luxury of being skeptical, Percy settled into a seated position on the floor with his right leg extended outward. He uncorked the bottle and downed half the water in several small sips. He ate half the berries, checked the compass, and unscrewed the small container.

A plain white paste was inside. It didn't smell like anything in particular, but after a moment's thought, he realized it was probably meant to be rubbed on an injury. Resting the open leaves on his lap, he carefully applied it to his throat and knee, using what was left on his shoulder.

_Either it helps me, or hurts me_, he figured._ Either way, I'm probably still boned_.

He sat for a short while then, listening to the silence and eating the rest of the berries. The compass wasn't much help it he couldn't see it and didn't know which way would lead him home. The matches would help to relight the candle, but he wasn't sure when he'd need that. It's not like it provided much warmth.

A snap of cold at the base of his spine made him sit up straighter. Percy blinked his eyes owlishly in the dark and fell very still. It took him a moment to realize that the shade was already in front of him, waiting patiently on the other side of the tunnel. When he saw it, he moved to stand, but his knee spiked with such sharp pain that he winced and decided to stay down.

"_Must move_," the shade exhaled, sounding like multiple voices this time. "_Right turn... back around. Follow left. Stay... quiet. Friends will find... you._"

Percy watched the thing's face shift several times before he realized it was looking for a response. Folding the paper package up, Percy gritted his teeth against the pain and used the wall to pull himself back to his feet.

"She killed you," he managed, swallowing uncomfortably. "And you want revenge?"

The shade said nothing, but didn't disappear. Percy stared at it before squinting down the tunnel.

"_Right turn... back_," it repeated. _"Left... Quiet. Find you._"

He didn't have any alternatives. Besides, the last time he listened to the shade, it had earned him a hoodie and some meager rations.

"What if the ogres find me first," he asked, mildly surprised when his throat didn't ache as much. The shade didn't seem to notice.

"_Trick_," it rasped, motioning toward Percy's pocket. "_... Clever demigod... One more trick._"

It started to fade from view. Percy wanted to ask it more questions, but he held his tongue. Only once it was completely gone did he start moving, headed further down the tunnel for what felt like ten long minutes. When he reached a strange Y-shaped fork, he stopped.

The tunnel he had been following seemed to continue in a straight path. It was the new tunnel that headed back the way he had come, at a different angle._ Right_, the shade had said. Up the new tunnel, in the direction he had come from. Percy rolled his dry lips together and thought for a moment before padding his pocket for the pack of Big Red. He had three slices left.

Somewhere down the dark tunnel ahead of him, ogres were lurking. They may well have been behind him, as well, which meant it was only a matter of time before they cornered him. But his friends were also in these tunnels somewhere, armed and powerful and looking for him. Maybe they would have found him already if the ogres hadn't been in their way. Percy tightened his grip on the pack of gum, bending the empty cardboard. If he could get the ogres out of their way, maybe they'd be able to get to him faster.

He pulled them out and unwrapped all of them. Chewing wasn't easy when his mouth was so dry, and his jaw ached from working through the rest of the pack. The cinnamon taste that had been so relieving with the first slice had burned the taste buds off his tongue, and he winced as he forced himself to chew. When he was sure that the gum's smell would be at its strongest, he stuck the big wad to a small stone and lobbed it up the tunnel he had just limped out of. He listened to it clack on the rock floor for a moment before turning back around.

The ogres might smell the cinnamon and go after it, but it wouldn't be enough to get them running. Besides, they had probably figured out his trick by now, and wouldn't be as eager to chase another sticky rock down a tunnel. No, what he needed was something big, to draw them here. Then, presumably, he would dart up the second tunnel and hook a left, and hide. If the shade was any sort of trustworthy, Thalia and Jason would find him after that.

After cooking up several variation of _screw it_, Percy made sure his meager supplies were stashed securely in his pockets, and adjusted his footing so that he'd be ready to run up the second tunnel. Swallowing, he drew a deep breath.

And yelled.

X

_Well this can only end in tears. That concludes the pre-written chapters, so I'll get to work on the next one! (It's already half-written, reviews are very encouraging.) _


	8. Chapter 8

_Back again. This chapter got a little long on me, but I don't know how soon I'll be able to update again, so we'll call it a compromise. Sorry about the last cliffhanger. I'm warning all of you now, I do that a lot. Builds the antici-_

_-pation._

X

Thalia didn't know what she expected when she first woke up underground. She wasn't sure what to make of it when she stumbled across Jason, either, though at that point things had begun to look fairly grim.

It was when Percy showed up that she knew they were doomed. If there was one thing that the son of Poseidon never failed to do, it was attract unreasonable amounts of danger. Even her time with Artemis, filled with vicious monsters and high-stakes hunts, seemed relatively tame compared to the trouble that Percy had found himself over the years. The guy was a magnet for mayhem.

Of course, it was a lot easier to be annoyed with him when he was perfectly capable of defending himself. The second Circe loosed that cursed arrow and Percy hit the cave floor, Thalia felt something harden in her chest. She wasn't sure at first if it was protectiveness or personal insult, because after Annabeth, Percy was possibly one of her best friends at Camp Half-Blood. What she did know was that he was suddenly a liability, no matter how good a friend he was. She started running over ways to protect him from the ogres, but all at once, he was gone, vanished with Circe's arms around his chest, and the hardness in Thalia's chest thickened.

Her anger had been growing ever since. Every ogre that fell by one of her arrows only made her feel better temporarily, and then the desperation and concern would creep back in. She wasn't willing to admit it out loud, but by the time they reached the open cavern and saw all those ogres spilling out of the different tunnels, she was no longer concerned with how to get out of the caves. Her focus had narrowed to finding Percy before he got himself hurt, to making sure that her dumbass cousin was safe and somewhere she could keep an eye on him. Then they could focus on getting to the surface.

"How are do we know for sure that we're going the right way," Jason asked, hunkered down behind her as they crept through a tunnel with a low ceiling. She had collapsed Aegis for the time being, which made it easier to pivot and face him while she moved.

"I'm sort of relying on Hazel and Nico for that."

In front of her, Nico was moving silently through the shadows, choosing which tunnels to go down without pause. It was unnerving, but they had to trust his ability to know where he was going. The two children of Hades might not be able to create new tunnels or dig their way out of the caves, but at least their sense of direction was proving steadfast.

"We have to go out of the way a bit in order to get around them," Hazel explained from behind Jason. Thalia glanced once again at Percy's sneakers on her feet, but didn't let her eyes linger.

Somewhere nearby, either in parallel tunnels or, gods forbid, ahead of them, ogres were milling about. From what they had said in the cavern, Thalia kept expecting the air to turn smokey, but so far there wasn't even the smell of a distant smoke bomb. Every so often, the echoing of an ogre shouting would ghost past them, but they hadn't run into any monsters-either because they were all busy hunting Percy, or because Nico was good at his job.

Thalia tried not to think about the yell they had heard. Either Percy was in grave peril, or he was every bit the moron Thalia originally pegged him for. Either way, they had to find him fast.

"You look like you're ready to punch through the rock," Jason muttered. He was closer to her than she thought, and his voice made her jump. When she looked back at him, his face was difficult to read; concerned, ready for battle, but he was regarding her with a certain amount of wariness.

"I'm fine," Thalia responded, turning to face forward and making a point of staring at Nico's back.

"You've been especially pissed off since we all got together," her brother continued, ignoring her quick dismissal. "Since Percy vanished."

Her shoulders visibly tensed before she could bring herself under control. Drawing a deep breath through her nose, Thalia tightened her grip on her bow and made sure her eyes were glued to Nico's jacket.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Her words were clipped and sounded more argumentative than she had intended, but Thalia had never been particularly fond of talking about her feelings with people.

"You should be," Jason said. "I'm not saying we should all be shrugging and laughing about it. Just that, more than the rest of us, you look like you're ready to murder everyone in these caves."

Nico took a chance and looked back at her for a second. His expression was as unreadable as ever-Thalia decided to ignore it. She was quiet for a moment, waiting to see if anyone else would speak. When the tunnel remained silent, she set her jaw and blew her bangs out of her face.

"Percy's an idiot," she finally said, "but he's_ our_ idiot. I don't like people messing with my family."

Much to Thalia's relief, Jason didn't say anything else. They walked several more yards in silence, feeling aimless and stressed, before Nico suddenly stopped short.

"Shit," he muttered, ducking his head. The smell of smoke hit Thalia a second later and she clenched her teeth.

"The smoke bombs?" Hazel crept up beside Jason and looked nervously between the other three.

"We're getting close," Nico responded, speaking for the first time since they had started moving. "I can feel Percy is nearby."

"Great," Thalia replied, "but which way from here?"

Nico didn't move, peering down the tunnel apprehensively. "There's a right turn up ahead. The smoke is only going to get thicker from here, though."

"We don't have much choice," Jason said.

"We'll have to move quicker," Hazel agreed.

"Well let's go, then," Thalia sighed. "We've gotta get to him before they do."

X

He was no expert, but Percy was pretty sure than at some point, the karmic wheel would have to start turning in his favor.

After ridding himself of the rest of his gum and racing up the other tunnel on a bad knee, he realized two things: the first was that there were two ogres who hadn't been as far away as he had thought; the second (and probably the most important,) was that they were running right toward him, two hundred feet up the new tunnel.

The tunnel he had originally come down was no longer an option for escape-that was the direction he had thrown the gum-covered rock. The way forward was presumably filled with the rest of the ogres, which meant that Percy had three directions and no where to go.

Oh, and the ogres running toward him.

_"Get the runt!_" one of them bellowed, their pounding footsteps quaking the cave floor. Percy skid to a halt with wide eyes and tried desperately to think of a plan B, but he came up short. He was injured, cornered, and about to be pile-drived by two huge monsters.

So, naturally, he turned and ran back the way he had come, his heart in leaping into his throat. The sudden burst of fresh adrenaline helped to numb the pain in his knee and sharpen his focus as his eyes flew around for a solution. Rocks, rocks, nothing, ogres getting closer, fear, rocks, rocks, nothing.

Then, his eyes caught something, and he almost laughed out loud. In the cave wall just a few feet ahead, invisible from the other direction, was a crevasse just large enough for him to squeeze into. Whether or not it was deep enough he had no idea, but it was his only option. Over the rumbling of the ogres behind him, he could hear more coming his way from far off in the tunnels.

He stumbled to a hasty stop beside the crevasse and forced his bad shoulder into it, ducking his head down. The ogres were too close for him to spare even a second-he forced his way into the crack, the sharp edges of the rock dragging across his lower back, pushing his hoodie and shirt up. He bashed his elbow and knocked his head, but maybe karma was starting to work for him, because he fit in.

The ogres reached the crevasse and smashed into each other in their attempt at coming to a halt. They scrambled to reach into the crack, both of their arms jamming it, buying Percy an extra few seconds to pull his way deeper into the crack. He was breathing hard-the small space felt like it would collapse in on him, especially with the two brutes trying to shove each other out of the way.

He was three feet into the crack when one of them finally shoved the other away and forced his arm in after him. The hand was huge-big enough to completely wrap around Percy's upper arm, no problem. Percy's heart bounced around his ribcage at the site.

"Com'ere you whelp," the ogre snarled, pressing his face into the crack and baring his rotting teeth. Percy gulped down as much air as he could and kept forcing himself deeper into the crack, only about two inches out of the ogre's reach. The obsidian on either side of him was sharp and wet, scraping across his skin, drawing blood here and there. His heart was racing too fast, reacting to the ogre, the small space, the fear that at any second the monster would hook it's fingers onto his shirt sleeve and yank him right out of the only safe spot he had.

"Get him," the other ogre yelled, impatient that his friend was taking so long to get hold of Percy. "If you can't, I will!"

"Shut up," the first one barked, his heavy voice echoing loudly in the narrow space between him and Percy. "He ain't gettin' away this time. Almost… got him…"

The crevasse was so narrow on either side of him that suddenly, Percy wasn't sure if he could move any farther back. He reached blindly into the darkness, trying to find a hold in the rock wall, but there was nothing-just wet, sharp points that weren't big enough to grip. The ogre readjusted and pushed his shoulder into the crack, his meaty hand coming even closer. Calloused fingertips brushed Percy's skin and he sucked a sharp breath in through his teeth.

"I got 'im, I can feel 'im," the ogre said, sounding triumphant and menacing. Percy wedged himself between the rocks just a bit further. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought it might burst.

"Well pull him out then," the other ogre snarled, growing antsy.

"Gimme a second," the first one responded, his voice strained with the effort of trying to grab the half-blood.

"How about you both give up," Percy suggested, his voice ragged with panic through his injured throat.

"Oh," the ogre laughed, waving his hand around to try and find Percy's arm again, "you'd like that. But no, we're gunna… drag you outta there and-stop moving, you little _maggot_-we're gunna drag you right outta there and snap some ribs."

"Stop yapping and_ grab_ the damn kid," the other ogre snapped. Percy gritted his teeth and forced himself an inch deeper into the crack, the rock behind him tearing at his exposed lower back. The ogre who had been reaching for him snarled in frustration.

"He keeps moving," he cried, reaching for Percy's arm desperately and coming up short. Momentarily, the demigod thought to laugh-he had moved into the rock just deep enough now that the monster couldn't grab him. Then, suddenly, the arm disappeared from beside him.

"Oh for hell's sake, you can't do anything," the other ogre said. Too suddenly, another arm filled the space, this one longer and skinnier. It felt along the wall in Percy's direction. "I'll get the runt."

Percy's fingers suddenly slid into a hold on his far side. He gasped for breath, dizzy with panic and claustrophobia, and gripped the hold for dear life. With every bit of strength he could muster, he started to pull himself through the rock, ignoring the scraping pain and the increasing throb in his bad shoulder as he pulled. He moved two inches, three, and could feel the rock getting looser around him. He was so close to being out of reach.

Then, the fingers of the other ogre grabbed the sleeve of his hoodie and held fast, pulling him in the opposite direction.

"Got him!" the ogre proclaimed, excitement in his voice. "I got him!"

"Well then pull him out," the first one said, sounding far away and disappointed that he didn't have the honor of pulling Percy out of the hole.

In the crevasse, Percy bit out a cry of frustration and pain as the ogre yanked him backwards, grating his lower back over the obsidian behind him. With his hoodie and shirt pushed up, there was nothing to protect his skin as the ogre yanked him over the sharp rock. Still, he held fast with the grip he had found, and pulled with all his might to get away from the ogre.

"Let go," he cried, horrified by the desperation in his ragged voice. The ogres laughed, a nasty, snarling sound, and Percy felt tears of sheer panic prick at the corners of his eyes.

Then, the stitching at shoulder of the sweatshirt ripped, and Percy fell straight out of the crack away from the ogres, collapsing into a small opening and landing heavily on his bad shoulder. For a moment, he couldn't see straight-the lack of oxygen in his lunges, coupled with the pain and fear, left him dizzy, blind, and deaf on the floor. As his vision cleared and his senses returned to him, he could hear the agonized, raging yell of frustration on the other side of the narrow crack.

"No! Get _back here_ you miserable little_ maggot_!"

Percy looked around with bleary vision and found himself in the bottom of a well. The floor was circular, maybe four feet across, and flat beneath him. Maybe thirty feet above, faint golden light was flickering down from a circular opening. Firelight, maybe. Sky, if he wanted to torment himself with optimism.

Half-way up the shaft, about fifteen feet above where he lay at the bottom, there was an opening to another tunnel. Percy lowered his eyes and looked at the narrow crack he had fallen through. On the other side, he could see the hideous faces of the two ogres, fighting with one another while simultaneously shouting at Percy, demanding he_ get back here_.

He dropped his head back onto the floor and curled in on himself. Everything hurt, and he could hardly breathe. The right sleeve of his hoodie was hanging on by a thread, exposing his shoulder. After a few uncertain moments, he reached around and felt his lower back. His fingers came back bloody.

"Godsdamnit," he gasped, almost inaudibly. On the other side of the crack, the ogres were shouting off down the tunnels, trying to get their brethren to show up. Maybe there was an ogre small enough to fit through the crevasse after him, or strong enough to break the rock out of their way. It was only a matter of time before they got to him.

Shakily, Percy pushed himself into a seated position in the small space, leaning carefully against a flat part of the wall. His knee was shot, that much he knew without having to stand. He could hardly catch his breath, though it was slowly becoming easier, and he could hear the growing shouts of ogres approaching.

This time, the fear wasn't replaced with a plan. Percy sat huddled at the bottom of a shaft, a mere five feet from what would soon be a hoard of ogres, all gunning to break his bones into tiny pieces. And then probably eat him. He could try climbing up the rock face and reaching the tunnel above him, but his arm felt dead after falling on his bad shoulder, and his knee would no longer support his weight. He was cold, hungry, exhausted, scared, and the dampness felt like it had seeped all the way to his bones. To say nothing of the pain.

Outside, more ogres arrived. They took turns shoving each other out of the way to try and see Percy through the crack. He stayed in his huddle against the wall, not seeing the point in moving right away, but he watched them through the corner of his eye. They all looked excited.

"How do we get 'im," one of them asked, and some part of Percy relaxed when none of them could offer up a solution.

Suddenly, the ogre that was peering in at him was shoved violently aside, and the rest of them grew quiet. The next face to move in front of the crack was the last one he wanted to see.

"There you are," the stoic ogre said, his deep voice resonating through the crack. Percy suddenly felt very small, and even more helpless, if that was possible.

"Be a good boy," the stoic ogre said, "and crawl on out of your hole. It will hurt less if you behave."

"Fuck you," came the impulsive New Yorker response, right on cue despite the fear and the dim prospects. Percy shifted away from the crack and found the strength to glare.

To his rising terror, the stoic ogre grinned, revealing jagged teeth the same color of the obsidian that framed his face. "When the witch woman breaks you, I will be the first to eat your flesh."

"Yeah?" Percy managed, swallowing hard despite the pain. "I'll remember that when I kill you."

The ogre laughed, a deep, joyless sound that shook the walls around Percy and made his eardrums ache. That's when he smelled the smoke.

"We will get you out of there one way or the other," the ogre replied, sounding confident. "Like smoking out a rat."

The brute lifted the smoke bomb up so that Percy could see it. It looked like a cannonball, heavy and solid with who small holes on either side that were starting to billow thick, dark smoke. Percy's throat grew even tighter.

"I'm good in here, thanks," he managed, his heart rate picking up again. He looked up, trying to gauge the distance up to the tunnel above him, trying to find a route to scale the wall. The air was starting to grow hazy.

"Come out, little demigod," the ogre said again. "I will only break your legs."

Not tempting, Percy thought fleetingly, struggling to get onto his feet. His body screamed for him to stay down-his legs shook, his breathing was ragged, and the piercing pain in his knee nearly consumed all of his attention. He just barely managed to stand, leaning heavily on the wall for support.

That damn shade had told him to go this way. To use one final trick, to draw the ogres in. It had said that his friends would find him after that, but how could they possibly get to him now? The chute he was huddled in was turning into a chimney, and the tunnel on the other side of the crack was crawling with ogres. Percy was every bit as alone and screwed as he was before that shade had given him unsolicited advice.

But like an idiot, he had listened. He had followed it's directions because he had no other choice, had accepted the candle and the hoodie from that woman because he was desperate. Even her swearing on the River Styx wasn't convincing now. Maybe she knew she was damned anyway, and decided to use it as a way to trick him. He had followed right along, into this miserable trap. He was stuck at the bottom of a hole, hardly able to stand, doomed to become smoked meat for the monsters just out of reach.

That's when he looked up and saw a face hovering about fifteen feet above him, peering down through the thickening smoke.

"Nico," he croaked, and immediately into a coughing fit, the impact of which knocked him off his feet. He landed hard on the cave floor and struggled to catch his breath, but the coughs kept coming, his lungs filling with smoke. Tears filled his eyes, running down his cheeks and leaving sooty streaks in their wake. Suddenly, he was too disoriented to think straight. It was only him and the coughing, the lack of air, the pain.

A cold breeze billowed around him in the narrow space, and for a second, the smoke cleared. He cracked his eyes open, struggling to inhale, and saw sneakers hit the floor. Someone was lifting him to his feet, supporting all of his weight. Arms wrapped around his chest, and he felt someone warm press against him, holding him up. His head fell heavy and limp against the side of someone's neck, and then suddenly, the cave floor dropped away from his feet. He held on to whoever he was pressed against, terror gripping him. _Oh, gods, now I'm falling. This just keeps getting better_.

And then, he was lying flat on his back, in a new tunnel. Jason was keeping up a steady flow of air to keep the smoke away, but he looked panicked and worried. Hazel cupped Percy's face, and her hands were so blissfully warm against his skin that he cracked a hint of a smile. Gradually, air started to move into his lungs again. He could see the concerned looks floating above him, on his friend's faces. His friends.

Somehow, too suddenly, Thalia leaned over him. "Gods, you couldn't avoid trouble if you tried, huh?"

X

_Safe and sound and still lost and injured in a miserable cave. Must be a Wednesday._

_Next time around, we're back to Annabeth, Piper, and our favorite fiery friend, Leo._


End file.
